Those Nights in Martinique
by Kthonia
Summary: Original series, 1795 storyline. A fresh re-imagining of the witch Angelique's back story and the legendary Barnabas-Josette love triangle. It goes from her childhood at the very beginning, to when they first met on that romantic Caribbean isle, to the tragic events at Collinwood, 'til un-death do they part.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note:_

_Almost all the characters are derived from the original series with the following exceptions: the servants (slaves) on the duPres sugar plantation, Josette's mother, the Obeah woman, Reverend Jennings, and Curtis Braithwaite the banker. The idea of making Barnabas's mother from Quebec is entirely my own._

_Historical Tidbit: There really was a deadly epidemic of yellow fever in New York City in the summer of 1795, how __cool is that? _

Those Nights in Martinique

(based on Dark Shadows, the original series)

Chapter 1

Angelique and Josette were more than friends but less than sisters. Inseparable companions from the start, their wooden cradles rocked side by side. They lived in the same plantation house on the island of Martinique in the colonized West Indies, in the days of long ago when wooden sailing ships braved pirate-infested seas to feed the white man's craving for sugar cane, molasses, and bottled rum.

Josette duPres was the darling only daughter of Andre Barthelemy le Comte duPres, master of one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean islands. The orphan known by the name of Angelique Bouchard was merely her playmate servant. The two girls had contrasting complexions of dark and light: Josette's thick chestnut hair, buttermilk skin, and molasses brown eyes were in every way opposite to Angelique's sandy blonde curls, pale eyes like water, and fair freckled skin that burned so easily in the midday sun.

"I wish I had your skin," Angelique said to her companion one day, as her raw crimson shoulders flaked and itched. "Instead of turning into a boiled lobster."

Josette laughed. "I can't give you my skin! But you can have this parasol."

They shared the same nursemaid, a Cajun slave baptized with the name of Veronique. Both Josette and Angelique called their nursemaid _Mamma_ and respectfully addressed Josette's real mother as Madame. The nursemaid had secretly told Angelique her real native name in a language older than Creole, a secret name by which the spirits of her own ancestors knew her. Mamma asked Angelique to promise not to ever tell anyone. "Names are power," the nursemaid taught her. "And Monsieur duPres has enough power over me as it is."

At the end of each day, Angelique had the special privilege of withdrawing to the downstairs kitchen for supper when Josette was told to go upstairs alone. She ate scraps and leftovers out of a chipped stoneware bowl—one of the few possessions that the orphan truly called her own. Yet, at the time, she never felt that her meals were second-best to Josette's servings. The master's table provided plenty of waste, and so Angelique and the slaves who served the duPres household never went hungry.

Nightfall meant storytime in that big warm kitchen, when the work was done and the pots were scraped clean. She joined with singing in Creole the special rhyming songs that Josette would never know. A three-legged stool seemed to be made just for her. Low to the floor, it was just the right size for Angelique's little legs. The stool was colored light blue in chipped paint that under the cracks hinted of wood grain covered up and trying to peek through.

By the firelight, sitting on the stool at Mamma's side, Angelique learned age-old tales and parables that were not written in any of Josette's books. She clapped for the clever Rabbit and laughed at the antics of foolish Cat. She always tried to guess what Dog or Monkey or Turtle would do next, but her favorite stories were about Anansi the spider. Everybody who gathered in the kitchen after dark knew Anansi stories, even if they called him by different names. The Haitian who tended to Monsieur duPres's horses, and the Jamaican who knew fifty ways of cooking shrimp, and the chambermaid who rinsed Madame's silk stockings in a bowl of rosewater—they all knew stories about the tricky spider.

"Time for a crick-crack story, Veronique," said the butler who was the eldest man of them all. Every evening, he took his seat on the bricks next to the fireplace. He lit a clay pipe and puffed it from the corner of his smile. Despite his white hair, and the wrinkles in pouches around his eyes, at storytime he acted like a boy again. "Time for a crick-crack story."

"Yeah, it sure is." Mamma settled cross-legged onto a patch of hooked rug on the floor. "I've been thinkin' all day about somebody who needs a story told about him. Who do you think it is, lil' angel?"

"Compė Anansi," said Angelique on the special stool at Mamma's side.

"That's right! Oh child, do you know about that time he almost kept all the smarts of the whole world to himself?"

Angelique squirmed with delight. She knew this story by heart but could not wait to hear it again. Mamma had a way of making each retelling seem like the first. Her voice never lost its enthusiasm for drama; her hands reached out and sculpted the words in mid-air; her eyes looked up to the rafters and sparkled as if she could see it all happening.

"Sure he knows lots of things about how to spin silk and weave webs, but that's not enough for him. Oh no, that Anansi, he wants to know everything there is to know. So he sets off one day to gather up all the smarts in the world. He takes up a little piece here and a little piece there. He overhears a mama calling her baby girl or a papa teaching his son. He spends time talkin' to the old folks who sit lookin' out at the sea. He puts all the smarts that he gathers into a big ol' calabash gourd. They rattle around in there, till it gets fuller and fuller, and then one day it's all the way full. Anansi figures to himself he's now got all the smarts there is to be had. But do you think he's gonna share any of it?"

A grinning Angelique shook her head, no. She knew Anansi would never share.

"No, he's keeping it all to himself! First he thinks of burying that big ol' calabash in his garden. Then he gets worried, what if Dog comes along to bury a bone and finds it? No, he needs to find a safe place where Turtle and Rabbit and Goat and Cat won't ever think to look. So he gets an idea of where to put his calabash full of all the smarts of the world. Where do you think? He's gonna put it up top of the tallest coconut tree. Because he's a spider, Anansi has eight arms and legs. He can hug onto his calabash with his front two arms, and he uses his other four spider legs to start climbing up that tree trunk. But as you all know, when you climb a coconut tree, you gotta hold on real tight and shimmy your belly up."

Angelique nodded, that was true. Often she had seen young skinny men wriggle their way like caterpillars up the trunks of coconut trees, up to heights twice as high as the second-floor of the plantation house.

"Anansi, he's having a terrible time getting up this coconut tree and holding onto his big ol' calabash! He climbs all day, and all night, and on into the next day. But he barely makes it halfway up! He is so tired by noon, with the sun all hot in his face, that he has to stop and rest. So there he is, resting, just hanging on, and wondering how is he gonna make it to the top?"

The melodic rhythm of Mamma's words sketched a picture in the air. Angelique imagined the scene like a memory she had truly experienced. Every detail shined clearly in her mind: the spider's fuzzy brown body, the straight pole of the coconut tree, the bottle-shaped pink gourd.

"Now, a little baby child comes walking by, and he looks up at the tree, and he sees Anansi hanging on there all sweaty. The child says, 'Compė Anansi, what are you doin'?' Anansi says, 'I'm climbing up this coconut tree to put my calabash up at the top and it's takin' a little longer than I figured.' Then that little child, he says to Anansi, 'Well, why don't you spin a web and sling that there calabash onto your back, so you can use all your eight arms to shimmy up that tree?' Oh! What a good idea that is! And do you think Anansi is happy to get that help? No, he is not. He shoulda thought of it himself! Here he figured he had all the smarts in the world bottled up in this calabash, and along comes this little baby child with still some smarts left over. So Anansi, he got so mad that you know what he did?"

Angelique giggled like a sparrow's chirp. She knew what he did, but her eyes widened with anticipation for Mamma to tell her.

"He threw it! He threw that big ol' calabash down! It landed smack to the ground and it busted wide open. All the smarts he collected blew away on the wind. They scattered all over, and you know how it is with the wind blowing stuff around—it don't blow even. Some places there's lots of it, and in some places there ain't so much, and in some places there ain't none of no smarts to be had at all there."

"Not one little bit," the old butler said as he puffed thoughtfully on his pipe.

##

In the nighttime, she got to keep Mamma all to herself. Angelique slept on a trundle bed in a narrow room barely large enough for the nursemaid's cot and a wash basin. But it was a private room of their own, not a communal bunkhouse where the field hands slept. To Angelique it felt superior to the finest suite in Versailles despite the packed dirt floor and the leaky thatched roof. She smiled in her sleep to know that she owned something Josette did not, even if it was just for the dark hours. She dreaded the dawn when she would have to share Mamma's attention with others. Often she wished that she could hold back the rising of the sun; if only the night could last forever.

Every morning, Mamma always combed Josette's chestnut hair first, and then styled Angelique's golden curls to match. She dressed the girls in identical frocks—Angelique in the cast-offs and leftovers that Josette did not want anymore. On the occasion of one Christmas carnival, Mamma crocheted for Angelique a linen doily as an imitation for the French lace that Josette wore in church. She always kissed the top of Josette's forehead first in turn, but Angelique sensed that Mamma lingered a bit longer on her.

"My beautiful baby girls," she would often say, when Madame duPres was not around to hear.

"Are you really my mother?" Angelique asked her, after the end of one typical day, when they were alone in their shared room. One half-melted candlestick glowed against Mamma's mahogany brown cheeks. The rest of the room was a wonderfully deep darkness.

"In all ways that counts, I am, little angel. You're as dear to me as if you 're my own."

The orphan girl insisted, "But you really aren't my own mother? The way Madame duPres is Josette's own? They look like the big and little of the same person. Why don't I look like anybody?"

Tears swelled up to fill Mamma's big brown eyes. She raised the sleeve of her cotton nightgown to dab at her own cheeks. "Oh, little angel, your eyes are seeing the truth for sure."

"Who's my real mama?"

"Nobody knows but the _Bondye_ and your mama herself—wherever she is. Now, you pay no more mind to that, 'cause it'll only lead to frettin' and misery if you're always wantin' what you can't ever have. You got what you need with me. I love you, little golden angel."

Angelique sprang up on tip-toes and hugged her fiercely. "And you won't ever leave me?"

"Never, child, never."

#

One morning, a carriage came to take Mamma away. The master Andre duPres came to the doorway of the servants' quarters and stood there overseeing her exit. For the first time, Angelique understood the true power of the words master and slave. His ginger blonde hair and paper-colored skin granted him authority to sell Josette's nursemaid the same as any of his trotting horses, his hunting dogs, or a sack of sugar cane. Mamma did not complain. With quiet dignity, she collected her meager belongings into a knitted sack. Gruff and impatient, the master hurried her outside.

Josette wailed and clung to her nursemaid's skirts. Angelique dogged along behind—afraid of Mamma leaving, but more afraid of the Monsieur who could not be swayed from his decision.

"Stop crying, Josette! You're nine years old, now, much too old for a nursemaid. You're a big girl. It's high time we cut the apron strings and you start acting like a young lady. My sister is coming to stay with us. Your Aunt Natalie will teach you how to be a lady, the things that Veronique could never know. Stop crying, I said!"

He stepped between them and forced them apart. Mamma was crying too as she stepped into the coach where another gentleman waited. A new master. A new family. She was taken away by the crack of a whip and the lurch of carriage springs.

Angelique hugged herself. She watched it go, the black coach like a hearse robbing her of the only mother she had ever known. Instead of sadness, she felt a smoldering rage gain strength within her.

Little Josette screamed in one of her tantrums. She broke loose of her father gripping her wrist. Arms flapping wildly, she started running up the road.

"Josette!" Her father chased after her.

His pudgy legs and barrel belly weighed him down. He looked like a fat old dog chasing a butterfly. His hat blew off. From where Angelique stood at the front steps of the plantation house, she watched them go uphill the slope of the sandy road.

The carriage went up to the ridge where the road curled and dipped over the other side. All too soon, its black roof was lost to view on its descent towards the sea. Josette scrambled wildly to the very edge—as if to jump off and fly. That was where her father caught her and picked her up. He carried her back downhill, with her legs kicking and her ruffled pinafore swirling in the air.

The rage inside Angelique swelled and spread, a silent scream privately held within herself just as loud as the tantrum screams of Josette being carried back down the hill by her father. Mamma was sent away because Josette did not need a nursemaid anymore. This was all Josette's fault.

#


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Four years later, everything in the world changed. A new country formed after a decade of violence and blood, and the United States of America like a sapling tree began to spread its roots. On the other side of the Atlantic, an old country began to crumble in July when the people of France stormed into the Bastille prison. Changes also occurred on the duPres sugar plantation in Martinique; changes that for two young girls felt more important than revolutionary wars starting or ending.

Josette and Angelique grew taller and equal to the master in height. Monsieur duPres started calling the girls his prize fillies, which made Josette giggle, "Oh Papa!" Their hips gained a curve and their breasts sprouted into rose buds, as Andre duPres remarked to his wife. Madame Marguerite duPres commanded her servants to take away their childish frocks to be replaced with ladylike gowns. Josette, of course, had a stiff corset and petticoats beneath her Parisian fashions. Angelique wore plain cotton imitations. She treasured the lacey cap that Mamma had crocheted for her; it was the only possession that Madame duPres allowed her to keep.

The master's unmarried older sister Natalie la Comtesse duPres returned fresh from a trip to the heavenly court of King Louis XVI, bringing splendid presents and a constant litany of disdain for how "that American debacle" was doomed to fail. "An entire nation to be governed without a king? It will be chaos. It won't last five years." Countess duPres gave Josette lessons in penmanship, embroidery, and how to read sheet music on the harpsichord. Out of her summer villa in Pau, she brought a collection of leather-bound volumes with the plays of Moliere, whom she frequently boasted was superior to the English playwright Shakespeare. In the afternoons, over tea and croissants, Josette and the countess would recite the dialogue from _L'École des Femmes _and _Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur, _and they would laugh loudly at the wit of Moliere's satire.

Angelique had twice the chores to do, attending to both Josette's and the countess's material needs. She did her work without complaint as Mamma would have been proud to see her do. She laundered their lacy underclothes and dried them to white in the sun. She hung mosquito nets around their canopy beds. She wiped the mud off their dainty shoes. She polished their silver jewelry. She put away their feathered hats in the boxes lined with tissue paper. She refilled the crystal cruet of Josette's favorite perfume, and the strong odor of jasmine stuck to her own fingers for hours. Angelique often wondered, _Mamma_, w_here are you now? Are you happy with your new family, or do you miss me too? If only you could read and write, we could send each__ other letters._

#

On Christmas Eve, upon returning from midnight mass, Josette's mother fell suddenly ill. The carriage ride caused Madame duPres to vomit the communion bread and wine all over her lacy bodice. Servants flocked to catch her from collapsing in the foyer.

"Take her upstairs," the master commanded even as he turned away. A mood of grim urgency overtook him as if he were late for a business appointment. He kept on his hat and boots. He launched outside to the dark balmy night and slammed the front door behind himself. _Where is he going,_ Angelique thought. _At this hour? When his wife is falling ill?_

Countess duPres tugged Josette by the hand. "Come with me."

Josette dug in her heels, resisting the pull to be drawn to her bedroom like a child. "But my mother needs me!"

"No Josette," the countess said firmly. "Don't worry about your mother. You'll see her in the morning."

As a mere servant, Angelique had the freedom to stay with the group who helped Madame duPres stagger upstairs. The dainty woman had broadened her girth in the last few months to almost double her size. At the same time Josette's feminine curves developed, her mother's statuesque beauty had degenerated quickly to resemble a stuffed goose. Lately she had abandoned a corset altogether and wore only loose-fitting layered gowns. Thick box pleats in the back fanned out from her shoulders to the dovetail of her trailing hem.

Madame clutched her swollen belly, crying out, "My child! My child!"

"Shall I go and fetch Josette?" Angelique volunteered.

"No," said Alexandre the head cook, a Gascon from the south of France who had been imported into the household with the Countess duPres. His black hair was as frizzy as a Cajun's and he tied it back into a thick puff at the nape of his neck. Even though his skin tanned to a shade of brown darker than a mulatto, the master still considered him a white man worthy of a free man's wages. Alexandre carried himself with a foolish pride, imagining that knowledge of pastry and meringue gave him wisdom in all things.

"Why not?" Angelique challenged him. "She is calling for her child."

"Don't you know, girl? A second child is coming. Josette's goin' to have a little brother or sister soon."

In wonderment, she followed them into the grand bedroom—a chapel of lace and flowers and gilded mirrors—but was too busy to admire the splendor of the place she had been forbidden to enter until now. She helped draw back the paisley quilts and blue sheets so that the suffering Madame could lie down. Servants removed the lady's brocade gown and loose-fitting smock dress, leaving her in only a cotton chemise. Angelique stared at her large, round belly and suddenly understood. She looked like one of the master's hunting dogs when it had been ready to whelp puppies.

"Too soon, too soon," the madame cried, weeping and feverish. Her chestnut hair spread over the pillow in a starfish pattern around her face.

Jean-Baptiste the butler arrived, dressed in his Christmas tailcoat as clean and fine as the master's suit. He was the oldest man in the house—twice as old as the master himself—with hair gone cotton white and a voice that sounded like a wood rasp. A native-born African, he came into service of the master's father at the age of seven, before the duPres family ever came to Martinique, when they had lived in the south of France in a villa of pink stone. Although he also had a secret name in the old language that was not Creole, he did not tell his name to anyone.

Jean-Baptiste gave his advice. "It's goin' wrong and bad. We must call the _Obeah_ woman who lives on Mount Pelée. She will come down and do what needs to be done."

"None of that devil magic," said the Gascon cook with a sneer of contempt. "We must give her a holy medal of Saint Margaret to hold."

The master Andre duPres came to the threshold of the door. He viewed the scene within and would enter no farther. "I've sent for a doctor! There's one at the shipyards."

Angelique stayed at the bedside for all the long hours of the night and into the next day. Christmas bells rang from the little church on the hill, but no one of the duPres household went to mass. The servants rushed back and forth, to dab at the suffering woman's sweaty forehead, to hold her hand, to offer her rum that she refused to drink.

Josette sobbed and threw a teenaged tantrum in the hallway, but for once she did not get her way. No matter how loudly she screamed, or how violently she stomped her feet, she was not allowed into the gloom of her mother's bedchamber.

The shipyard doctor paced back and forth for hours. The candles flickered at his movements. He wore a long brown coat with a high collar that boxed his beard at the sides. He smoked a pipe with a long thin stem. Angelique watched him sternly, her large green eyes a-light with disapproval. Surely the _Obeah_ woman on the mountain would be doing more for the laboring mother's agony. The shipyard doctor did not even lift the bed sheet to examine her.

"Well?" Andre duPres called from the threshold.

The doctor went to the doorway to speak to him. "Called me too soon, you did. Not much for me to do till the baby's coming."

"When will that be?"

"I don't know. These things take their own time."

Angelique saw the other servants in the hall, especially the old African Jean-Baptiste who was shaking his head in despair. She both admired his wisdom and despised his inaction. If given a choice between obedience to his master's orders and saving his master's wife, then one should have the courage to rebel. _The meek shall inherit the earth, so __the priests tell us_, she thought. _Does that say the meek allow everyone else to die before them?_

Madame cried out in loud, huffing gasps. Too weary to scream, she was half crazed and half asleep. Her skin paled to candle wax. Her chestnut hair blackened with sweat. "It's coming. It's coming."

The doctor rushed back to the bedside. He reached underneath the bedsheets, ever mindful of the lady's modesty. He hesitated to probe between the Madame's knees and fumbled about blindly.

"Yes, yes, I feel it. Yes..."

The lady groaned once more. She curled her whole body forward in one supreme effort, and then collapsed back against the pillows. Slowly, the doctor pulled forth a slippery thing the size of a half-grown puppy.

Silence hushed through the room.

The doctor lifted the baby upside-down by the feet. He spanked the tiny buttocks. The infant was as gray as a squid and did not move.

"Oh my God!" Andre staggered backwards into the corridor. He slammed his shoulder against the far wall. "Oh my dear God! No, God, no!"

The doctor laid the tiny bundle onto the foot of the bed. "It can't be..." He pushed at its little stiff chest as he would for a half-drowned man.

Forgotten on the bed, the mother sagged sideways off the pillows. Her face turned gray. The stench of black blood filled the room. Angelique stood nearest to her, listening to her gargle on her exhaustion. It was only Angelique who heard the madame breathe out her last and fail to breathe in again. A cold wind rushed through the room—colder than any wind that she had ever felt. It snuffed out the candles. Everything went dark.

"I'm sorry to tell you, Monsieur duPres," said the shipyard doctor. "It would have been a boy."

#

Andre duPres shut himself in a guest bedroom. In one hand he carried a framed oil portrait of his wife. In the other fist, he gripped a bottle of Jamaican rum. The butler Jean-Baptiste urgently gave orders to all of the other servants, "Lock away the master's collection of pistols and flintlock muskets. Don't bring 'em out, even if he asks."

The priest came to the bedside to mumble prayers in Latin, and the master did not come out to greet him. It was the countess Natalie duPres who escorted the priest up and down the stairs; it was the countess who thanked him for his services; it was the countess who paid him a handful of silver coins. Angelique overhead the priest saying that because the baby had not received baptism before it died, its little soul was doomed to Hell. "But it's fortunate that Madame duPres made her confession at Christmas Mass. She died with her sins forgiven."

Josette heard the news from her Aunt Natalie and immediately broke down weeping. Angelique stayed with her all night. For the first time in many years, the two girls shared the same bed. Surrounded by lace curtains and the faint blue light of a crescent moon, she listened to Josette crying softly in her sleep. It was one of the rare times that Angelique felt sorry for her.

But when morning came, Josette awakened with a cheery smile. "I must go to Papa and tell him what I dreamed."

"What did you dream?" she asked.

"I dreamed the most beautiful dream. I can hardly describe it! I saw my mother in Heaven and all the saints reached out to her in welcome. The Blessed Virgin herself took my mother by the hand. They are sitting up there now on a golden throne in the clouds. Mother will never again be sick or unhappy. She's looking down on us, watching over us in the company of angels. She loves me and Papa very much."

Angelique gawked back at her, mystified. "Aren't you sad that your mother is dead?"

"No, of course not!" Josette laughed at her silliness. "I'm so happy that Mother is in such a beautiful place. Oh, I must go tell Papa right away!"

Josette ran off in only her nightgown, a fairy nymph of white and blue lace ruffles. Alone once more, the familiar fury twisted itself in Angelique's gut. Josette's own mother had become a discarded bit of rubbish like so many of her pretty things: the dresses that bored her, the shoes hardly worn, the ribbons of her hair, the flowers that fell off her hat. How often had Josette exclaimed, _I love those earrings_, only to drop them into her jewelry box a week later and never wear them again. Angelique wondered if the girl had loved her mother at all, or if she were capable of truly loving anyone.

#

Angelique attended the funeral along with the rest of the family. Monsieur duPres, his sister the countess, and his daughter all dressed in black crepe. Angelique wore gray because she did not own a black dress. The tropical landscape mocked them with its dazzling palette of colors. The family stood as lead statues in the warm rain that sprinkled out of a pure blue sky. Grass on the hills all around the church yard was a vivid emerald green. In the distance, the turquoise sea lapped gently at the white sand beaches.

The priest sang out in Latin his benedictions. When he finished, Andre duPres placed a single yellow lily on the casket. The pall bearers lowered it by ropes into the rectangular hole in the ground.

Countess duPres hugged Josette to her bosom, hiding the teenaged girl's view of the men starting to shovel in dirt. "Come, child, let's go home. There's nothing more to be done here."

"I'm not sad at all," Josette insisted. "Don't you understand? Mother is in Heaven with Jesus, and Mary, and all the saints. We should be happy for her."

"Of course," said her aunt, biting back on the tears that choked her.

The priest turned away without another word. On the back of his ivory chasuble was embroidered a simple cross in yellow thread—a shabby imitation of gold trim. He slouched and carried himself with an uneven gait, strolling up the path towards the rain-battered church on the hill.

Some of the servants left with the duPres family. A few of them stayed. Angelique remained at the grave site with the old butler Jean-Baptiste, his wife Claire the chambermaid, and the slender Haitian who tended the master's horses.

"You'd best go home, child," said Claire. She had no children of her own and usually showed no warm sentiment for the young. Today, though, she gazed at Angelique kindly and not as a servant would. Except for the flamboyant countess, Claire was the finest looking lady at the funeral. She had learned from Madame duPres that the only important things in life were the style of one's clothes, the novelty of one's bonnet, and the proper drape of a shawl across one's shoulders for each hour of the day. Now that her mistress was gone, Claire's own simple yet fashionable gown made her seem like a darker twin of the woman being laid in the ground.

"I want to stay with you," Angelique said, her eyes widening.

"No, child, there's nothing to be done. Prayers have been said." As the woman bent over, the layers of her taffeta overskirt separated into a pair of wings on the grass. She picked up a handful of dirt, no longer mindful of soiling her crocheted gloves. Whispering a few words in Creole, too quietly for Angelique to hear, she tossed the soil into the grave.

The diggers kept shoveling. More and more dirt slowly filled up the chasm.

One by one, the butler Jean-Baptiste and the Haitian followed Claire's example. They picked up handfuls of soft sod and, whispering a little prayer in their own words, threw the dirt into the hole.

"Is that enough?" Angelique asked.

Claire patted the girl on the lace doily that topped her blonde curls. "She'll rest in peace as long as no one disturbs her. Listen carefully, child, don't ever say her name out loud again. When you pray to the saints on behalf of her soul, say only, 'Josette's mama,' and never her name."

"Why should I not say her name?"

"Names have power, child."

The butler stepped in between them, separating Claire's gentle hand from the girl. "Enough of that talk, woman. Don't worry this child's head with such things."

#

Long after midnight, Angelique sneaked out of the house. Moonlight shined faintly from the crescent in the starry sky. The white sand of the path glowed like a carpet of silver.

She hoisted her skirts above her knees and ran, sprinting as fast as she could, dashing up the hill to the cemetery. Headstones softly shined like broken chunks of the moon fallen to earth.

Angelique knelt at the foot of the freshly dug grave. She admired the headstone's craftsmanship, the names carved with typeset precision, the image of a fleur-de-lis above a chevron banner. She quickly subtracted the two dates, calculating the Madame's age to twenty-nine. _She was __not much older than I am now, when she first married Monsieur. The countess surely must be twice that age. Is Natalie duPres any more deserving__ of a long life than Madame Marguerite?_

As her fury built, so did the rain clouds overhead. Thunder rumbled. The sea's waves grew choppy. A warm wind ruffled the long blades of grass.

On her knees, Angelique pierced her fingers into the soft soil of the grave. "Josette doesn't want you anymore. She has tossed you away and forgotten you already. Tonight, after supper, she played the harpsichord and sang '_Au Clair de la Lune_' to her father."

Coarse pebbles scratched her palms. A bit of her own blood leaked into the earth.

"If they don't want you anymore, I will welcome you." Angelique widened her eyes, not daring to blink as she stared at the soil and imagined the sound of Josette's mother gasping her last breath. "I call out to you, wherever you are. I invite you to return. Be my mother if no one else will have you. Come to me! Be my mother and no one else's, Marguerite Cecile Guiberteau duPres!"

The surface of the world tilted sideways. Ground lurched at a slant like the deck of a ship in a storm. All of it rolled upside-down. Sky opened as a vast black chasm beneath her. Angelique clung to the soil overhead. Her legs dangled into emptiness. She saw the infinity of the universe—a vast empty blackness where countless suns swirled together as glittering hurricanes—and the fragility of the world as a thin crust floating on a sea of emptiness. Laughter screamed out of her open mouth. The earth continued its rollover and came around to right itself.

Beneath the soil of the grave, something stirred. She heard the muffled cracking sounds of wood splitting. The dirt swelled.

Angelique's eyes widened, staring at the headstone, waiting for the shining ghost to appear. She imagined that, in death, the madame would be as beautiful as the statues of saints in church. Not like Josette had said, on a golden throne on a cloud, but here... Here among us, she would be a perfect spirit free of her flesh, free of pain, free of suffering, and eternal. _She will be my mother forever._

A hand clawed up out of the dirt. Angelique screamed.

The hand continued to push upwards. Then a second hand and the arms emerged. Angelique recognized the soiled sleeves of the lace-and-silk gown that Madame had been buried in. The flesh of those arms was grayish blue—the color of a corpse—but active and strong, eager to dig out of the hole.

"No!" she cried. "This isn't what I wanted! Go away! Go back!"

More and more of it struggled to emerge: a head wrapped in a shroud, the dirt clinging to the soft cotton. White lace had turned brown. Pink silk seemed gray in the moonlight.

Angelique jumped to her feet. She ran away, sprinting downhill faster than she had gone up. All the while, she did not dare look behind her. Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears so she could not hear if a corpse's feet shuffled through the sands of the path. She could not hear anything but her own frantic breaths.

By the time she reached the kitchen door of the plantation house, she was in convulsions of terror. She pounded her fists on the closed door—in her madness, unable to do the simplest task such as turning the knob and going inside.

Jean-Baptiste opened the door. On this warm night, he wore cotton shirtsleeves that matched his white hair. The bleached fabric contrasted with the darkness of the rest of him.

"What is it, child?"

"She's coming!" Angelique threw herself into the man's embrace. Her cheek pressed to his strong shoulder. She listened to the steady thud-thud of his heart.

"Who's coming?"

"The madame..."

The butler gripped her shoulders and pulled her away. He frowned into her sobbing face. "What did you do?"

Angelique spun around in his grip to face the outside. Shivering all over, she stared past the door frame at the moonlight scene. Beyond the edge of the garden, through the fronds of the trees, she saw something move... something walking.

"You went to the cemetery, didn't you," he said in a calm but stern tone.

"Help me! She's coming!"

"Shouldna done that, fool child. We told you not to, and you went and did it anyway. You raised a zombie."

"A... zo-zombie?" Angelique's trembling mouth struggled to form around the unfamiliar word.

The figure in the garden stepped clearly into the open. It was indeed the Madame in her finest gown. The swathes of silky skirt tucked up at the sides like a curtain drawn away from the window. The underskirt with layers of lace ruffles showed underneath. Her dark hair was coiffed with great care but some of the pins had fallen out of her scalp. The swags of limp curls dangled over her face. And what a face! Purple bruises encircled her eyes. Brown slime drooled out of her yawning mouth.

"Jean-Baptiste, do something!" Angelique screamed.

"We are doin' something. Stay outta the way, child."

Angelique looked back at him in utter bewilderment. Then she realized that the kitchen fire was blazing and the room was full of light. At this hour, all the servants should have been asleep, but they gathered here. The chambermaid Claire was up and fully dressed in coral taffeta with lace cuffs like shredded lily petals sagging from her elbows. The Haitian and a couple of young men freshly stolen from Africa loitered by the hearth. They all held thick machetes from their work in the sugar cane fields.

Another person was in the kitchen—someone Angelique had never seen before.

Thin like a skeleton with the flesh painted on, the woman carried herself with a stiff posture of authority. She wore the bright aqua colors of the open sea, in large veils of cotton wrapped loosely around herself and belted with a cord at the waist. A scarf bundled around her skull concealed all of her hair. Large hoop earrings shined against her long neck. On the wrists of her bare arms, she wore bracelets of seashells. By the anklets of braided cord above her bare feet, Angelique realized who this had to be: the wise _Obeah_ woman who dwelled on the slopes of Mount Pelée the sleeping volcano.

The butler explained, "We were planning to go up to the cemetery at dawn and do a good job of sealing her in her grave. We feared it would be Josette calling her back—missing her mama—but we never figured it would be you."

"I ju-just," she stammered. "I just wanted a mama of my own."

"Oh poor child," said Claire blinking at tears.

The _Obeah_ woman at the fireplace lit a gourd cup full of incense powder. The smoke had the scent of dog hair and garlic flowers. The old woman made her way across the room in a sort of lopsided gait, working her shoulders and hips to pump her shuffling feet. She swayed like a turtle that had just lost its shell. She nudged past Angelique blocking the threshold. Unafraid, she stepped out into the night to face the zombie, as an old hunched crone almost like a zombie herself.

Angelique continued to shiver with terror even as her eyes widened to take in every detail. The _Obeah_ woman waved the gourd full of incense, back and forth, creating a pale web of blue smoke. She chanted the Madame's whole name backwards, syllable by syllable, "_Pres du teau ber gui cile ce rite g__ue ma_."

The zombie stopped advancing and gazed vacantly toward the house. Neither did she retreat. Angelique's eyes widened, and for the first time, in the crescent moonlight, she saw everything that was unseen. She saw the _loa _spirits with glowing eyes that lurked in the trunks of trees, or that slithered through the grasses, or that perched upside-down clinging to the eaves of the house.

_Take her back_, Angelique silently pleaded to the spirits of everything that lived. _Give her back the peace that I disturbed._

The _loa_ swarmed out of the trees and up from the moist grasses. They swirled and fluttered around the Madame in a liquid spiderweb. The zombie's eyes drooped. She swayed as if in a carnival dance. She opened her arms to welcome an embrace. Her skirt floated off the ground. The zombie drifted backwards, swimming in the air, moving away on a current of the warm night breeze. The _loa_ carried her off in the direction of the little church on the hill. Angelique watched them, a smaller and smaller twinkle fading away in the distance. At last, she felt the earth lurch, and rock, and sway sideways, and then set itself a-right.

Angelique collapsed, fainting into the butler's arms. She slept without dreams the rest of the night and into the morning.

##

While helping the Gascon make breakfast, everything felt sunny and bright and back to normal. Bread dough still rose, like any other day, and the baguette toasted to a rich golden brown on the bricks. Angelique gazed into the blazing fire. Plumes of bright flame slapped against the bottom of the soup kettle.

Between the gaps in the flames, she saw dark eyes looking back at her—darker than any eyes she had ever seen on a man or an animal. It was a new _loa_ who had awakened last night and was, now, aware of her.

_Serve me_, the eyes in the flames invited her. The burning log made a hiss like an animal breathing. _Serve me, and I will give you everything you want._

_I do not wish to serve anyone but the duPres family,_ Angelique replied in her thoughts. _There is nothing I want from you. __I only wanted a mother, but now, I don't want one anymore_.

_Soon, you will want something else._

#


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

In the several years after Madame duPres died, except for that first night, Josette did not cease her smiling. Nothing could diminish her _joie de vivre, _even when the master abruptly sold away Claire the chambermaid and forever extinguished the smile of Jean-Baptiste the butler. He continued to perform his daily duties with grace and dignity as he always had, but the light had gone out of his eyes. Overnight, he seemed to age a decade.

Countess duPres often received letters from Claire's new masters living in the faraway land of Monaco across the sea. Josette offered to read the letters to Jean-Baptiste—who politely refused to listen.

"I wonder if Jean-Baptiste truly loved her," Josette mused one day, while admiring her hairstyle in the mirror. She had tried to copy the pen-and-ink sketches of the latest Parisian fashion. "He never asks about Claire. He never wants to hear news of her."

"Perhaps he loved her too much." Angelique fluffed the cotton sheets on the lace-draped canopy bed.

"What do you mean?"

"Mademoiselle, have you ever wanted something that you could not have, and it pained you to think of it or speak of it?"

Josette's moist lips glittered when she smiled. "That's silly!"

#

In the same year that the King of France went under the guillotine, Josette blossomed into a debutante. Suitors began to circle the plantation house like seagulls at the shore in search of their prey. Eligible bachelors from wealthy families on other Caribbean islands, from New Orleans or as far away as Quebec, began sending letters to Andre duPres inquiring about his daughter's hand. The time had come, Countess duPres advised her brother, for the next level in Josette's refinement into a true lady.

"I don't want an English tutor!" Josette stomped her little foot. "Aunt Natalie can teach me English or so can you, papa."

Andre duPres followed after his daughter as she paced wildly around the room. At seventeen, Josette had grown up as tall as her father. Although he still cut an imposing figure with his broad belly, his swagger, and his gruff loud voice.

"It's no use arguing. I've already made the arrangements. A fine lady needs to speak proper English, these days. What if you need to entertain gentlemen from London, or from the colonies... I mean, the United States?"

Angelique bent over the little table by the window and gathered up the dishes from breakfast. Josette had only eaten half of her buttered croissant—always mindful of maintaining her slim, girlish figure even as she blossomed day by day into a full-grown woman.

"Who is he, Papa? Some stuffy old priest?"

"He's the son of a business partner of mine. They are a prominent family in New England, ship builders with investments all over the world. Our association is very mutually profitable. What good is it to harvest all this sugar if I can't transport it to where it's wanted?"

Josette stood over a vase of fresh orchids. She pretended to make herself busy with rearranging the white and purple blossoms. "His son, you say? So, he is not so old?"

"I'm not sure how old he is," Andre said. "He'll be coming here this afternoon with his uncle, and I expect you to make him welcome. Angelique?"

"Yes, monsieur?" Her arms were full of dirty dishes and half-drained tea cups.

"Have you aired out the sheets and swept the guest rooms, as I told you to?"

She dipped her legs in a curtsy. "Yes, monsieur, I have."

"Watch for the carriage and let me know when they arrive." Andre strolled away to the door. From the rack, he plucked a velveteen hat and squashed it onto his pale ginger curls. "Their name is Collins."

#

Angelique trotted down the sandy garden path to greet the horse-drawn carriage. It was a fine coach of black paneling with gilded frames around its curtained windows. The coachman perched on a high bench at the front of the roof's luggage rack. His long reins guided a foursome of brown horses. Fine and sleek animals, their smooth fur glistened like varnished mahogany from the bright rain that had been drizzling since the morning. Grand wheels rolled to a stop at the garden gate.

As she approached the parked coach, Angelique heard the men's voices inside—one mild and light-toned, the other a deep bass. They were speaking in English, more sophisticated than the pidgin spoken at the docks, so she only understood parts of phrases. "...just for the summer... so far from the harbor... the damned rain... my books..." The music of the bass voice thrilled her, even if she could not fully understand his words. She wanted to stand in the rain and listen to him speak for hours.

The coach's footman, who rode standing on a crossbar at the rear of the carriage, hopped to the sand. He tugged straight the lapels of his double-breasted coat on his way to opening the door of the coach. A black satin ribbon tied his long hair into a ponytail. In a well-rehearsed bow, he tucked one arm behind his back and parted his legs like scissor blades. He held that frozen pose waiting for the gentlemen to emerge.

Both gentlemen had dark hair and fair faces tanned by the sun. They had obviously spent a lot of hours outdoors, perhaps on the deck of their ship as they journeyed from that faraway place called Maine.

Angelique looked back and forth at the two, from one man to the other, and wondered which had the voice like a powerful _loa_ in a watering well. One man was slightly taller and had an air of maturity in his manner if not his appearance. He was the senior by perhaps ten years, a fellow still in the prime of his life. He wore a honey-colored coat with a green collar and cuffs. He carried himself with the poise and grace of a gentleman, while at the same time, a relaxed manner encouraged others to be at ease. Giving a nod of thanks to the footman holding the door caught the servant by surprise.

The other man, a few inches shorter, was still taller than Angelique so that she had to raise her chin to look him in the eyes. Such eyes! She went breathless. Bold and dark, he stared into her in a way that no living man ever had. His were the eyes of the darkness between the flames, the depth of a moonless night. In the brief moment before he spoke, she knew that he was hers.

"Good day_, _mademoiselle," he said in perfect French though with a noticeable drawl of the Quebec region. He reached for her hand. Angelique offered up her fingertips, limp and surrendering to his grasp. She received a small warm kiss on the knuckles. "My name is Barnabas Collins and I am enchanted to meet you."

"Oh monsieur," she sighed, reluctantly allowing her hand to slip out of his grasp.

The other man bowed from the waist, keeping himself at a distance. "I am called Jeremiah Collins. Will you, uh, would you be so kind, uh..."

Barnabas never took his eyes away from her, but the corner of his mouth twitched in something like a smile. Angelique understood his suppressed merriment and shared the secret of his thoughts; his companion's French was awkward and stammering.

"If you would please, mademoiselle," Barnabas spoke up, on behalf of his struggling friend. "Announce to your father that we have arrived?"

She backed away a step. "My father? Oh, you refer to Monsieur duPres."

Barnabas tilted his head to regard her in the way a hunting hound would study the underbrush in search of prey. "Pardon me, but I am very confused. Are you not Mademoiselle Josette duPres?"

"No, monsieur," she said. "My name is Angelique."

"Angelique," he repeated, and the sound of his deep voice speaking her name sent a shiver of warmth through her core.

#

Angelique carrying a teapot walked around the table. She filled each porcelain cup, in turn, with fragrant oolong tea brought from China by the Collinses. The lady Josette entertained the three gentlemen: her father, the businessman Jeremiah, and the younger nephew Barnabas who said not a word. Angelique made herself busy with offering little porcelain bowls of sugar cubes and tiny pitchers of cream. All the while she ached to hear him speak again. Andre duPres and Uncle Jeremiah conversed in English, haggling with good-natured competitiveness on the price of molasses and the number of barrels that the Collins family's ships could hold.

Barnabas watched Josette nibble at the corner of her croissant. Angelique stood right behind where he sat. She admired his broad shoulders, his strong posture not reclining in the chair but perched near the edge and leaned forward as if ready to jump up any moment. His hands were long and slender, not at all suited to hard labor. On his left index finger he wore a signet ring set in gold with a gemstone as black as a hole into the heart of the earth. Angelique breathed deeply the scent of him, the earthiness of his musky coat, the air of outdoors and sunshine, of wooden ships and the spray of the salty sea. He carried the aroma of faraway places.

From standing behind him, she could also see what he stared at—Josette. Her mistress was particularly lovely today in her frock of pink-and-magenta striped taffeta. A yoke of lace came down to a heart's point at the meet of her cleavage. She had powdered her neck and face so that her milky skin, in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window glass, had a porcelain sheen as delicate as the teacups on the table. A pair of pearl earrings set in silver sparkled at her earlobes. Her chestnut hair was curled and pinned and styled high up on her head, except for one lock that dangled over her left shoulder.

Angelique's rage began to simmer. _I saw him first. He kissed my hand before he kissed yours. Why must everything be yours, Josette?_

"If you don't mind," Barnabas began, speaking in French for Josette's benefit. "I would like to unpack my books and have a first lesson with my pupil?"

"It can wait," Andre responded in French as well, waving off the suggestion with a grand sweep of his arm. "You must be tired from your journey."

"On the contrary, I feel restless," Barnabas said. "I have been confined in that little box of a ship for weeks, in cramped quarters, being tossed about by the sea. It is so delightful to walk outdoors in the sunshine! Martinique is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life. The warmth and the colors are beyond my wildest imaginings. I could not rest, even if I were ordered to my quarters by President George Washington himself!"

Josette giggled in high-pitched chirps. "Oh Mister Collins, are you a friend of President Washington?"

Barnabas sat up a bit straighter at attention. Josette had spoken in English, one of the few conversational phrases she had learned from the Countess duPres.

"Miss duPres, you surprise me," he said, now switching to English as well. "I have come to tutor you, but it seems that someone else has gotten to you before me."

Josette blinked; he had spoken too quickly, and she was lost.

Angelique smirked at her confusion. She curtsied her way sideways, into his peripheral view, and explained in the meek and gentle voice of a servant, "Josette's aunt, the Countess Natalie duPres, has taught us a little... very little, monsieur."

"I see." He glanced her way. The brief meeting of their eyes sent hot prickles shooting into Angelique's belly. Could it be that she also sensed a reaction in him too, in the quickening of his breath?

Josette rose out of her seat. The three gentlemen got to their feet to honor a lady's departure from the table. It was a simple gesture, one that gentlemen always performed for Josette—but never for Angelique. As a servant, she came and went from the table, in and out of the room, and men always stayed comfortable in their chairs.

"I will show you to the library, monsieur." Josette extended her arm, offering to guide him out of the connecting archway.

"I would be delighted, thank you," Barnabas said in French.

"You're welcome," Josette replied in English.

Angelique tagged along behind Barnabas; there was no reason for her to stay while Andre duPres and Jeremiah Collins resumed talking business. Soon the tea and croissants would yield to Cuban cigars and a carafe of Jamaican rum to seal the deal.

The hallway was lined with narrow tables painted white and stenciled in blue and gold floral patterns. Vases held bouquets of freshly cut flowers; some native to Martinique, some imported from the south of France and allowed to thrive in Josette's walled garden—her miniature Fontainebleau, as the countess called it.

The library was an expansive room with a vaulted ceiling and bookshelves on three walls. The fourth wall was made of only windows that spanned from the ceiling to the floor. At the center a hinged pair of double doors opened onto the garden. Through the murky panes the colors of the garden's blossoms shined through, so that the plain gray glass seemed to be the stained windows of a cathedral.

"How exquisite." Barnabas stared breathlessly to the garden window. "I may do very little reading in this room with such beauty as a distraction." Then he turned, just as he said the word beauty, and looked straight to Josette.

Angelique hoisted his leather trunk from the floor up to the reading desk. She let the trunk fall heavily with a loud thud. "Are there no flowers where you come from, Monsieur Barnabas?"

"Oh yes, there are flowers in Maine, but they aren't as plentiful or as beautiful." He strolled over to the desk and stood opposite her, with the furniture a barrier between them. Angelique opened the clasps. He reached forward to raise the lid. The brass hinges of the trunk creaked loudly.

Each book was wrapped in several layers of oiled burlap. Packed between each precious bundle were handfuls of straw. Barnabas removed the books, one by one, with all the care of a nursemaid taking her babies from the cradle. He set them out on the table to air.

Josette used her fingertip to trace the gold-embossed lettering tooled into the leather book covers. "A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson. The Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver. The Holy Bible... I know that one!"

Barnabas laughed softly. "I'm sure you know it better than I do."

Angelique picked up another one and read the title aloud, "A Folio of Plays by William Shakes... uh, -speare. Oh, this is the famous Shakespeare, is it?"

"My favorite play is Hamlet," he said. "Do you know Shakespeare?"

Angelique fluttered her eyes to avoid his direct gaze, too piercing, too dark. "No, monsieur, I have never read it, but the countess has often compared him to Moliere."

"Moliere," Barnabas huffed disapproval in much the same way as the countess herself often had. "As if there were any comparison?"

Josette giggled and leaned upon his arm, so at ease with touching a man she had just met within the hour. "Oh monsieur, my aunt will gladly debate them with you!"

"I look forward to it." Rather than politely pushing Josette's hand off his sleeve, Barnabas instead rested his own hand on top of hers. His onyx ring was a black spot on his pale finger. "But first, you must stop calling me 'monsieur.'"

"Yes, I understand," Josette said in English. "Mister Collins..."

"No, no, call me Barnabas."

"All right, Barnabas," she agreed.

"No, no, listen." He moved about in a sort of slow, standing dance, rearranging their arms so that he could take hold of her shoulders and turn her to face him. "Don't pronounce the R with so much breath. Bah... na-bas. It is one of the most noticeable differences between French and English, and we may as well start our lesson here."

"Barnabas," she repeated, voicing the R with a rasp as she would in the word purée.

Angelique leaned forward over the desk. "Try harder, Josette! It's Ba-...nabas."

"Very good." He turned to Angelique and once more, the darkness smoldered between them. "You have a good ear."

Josette whirled and stomped off to the window. "Oh, I can't do it! I hate English!"

"My dear girl..." Barnabas reached out to empty air as he chased her across the room. "Don't be in despair. It's only our first day. Let's try something else, shall we? Let's go out into the garden, and you can tell me the colors of the flowers. Rouge… red. Bleu… blue. Jaune... yellow. Blanc… white."

Josette relaxed into her silly little smile again; she had won. Unlatching the double doors, she cast them open to the sunshine. The lacy curtains billowed in the warm breeze.

#


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The days flowed into weeks in a pattern of comfortable routine. Lessons started informally every day at breakfast over tea and croissants. "Say rather, crescent rolls," Barnabas insisted. Then, they moved into the garden to observe the flowers and the songbirds. Later they strolled to the edge of the veranda overlooking the turquoise sea. He encouraged Josette to describe in English the activities of the ships in the harbor. She frequently tripped over saying "sucre" instead of "sugar," but he often let her get away with it. Lunch was served on the patio at a glass-topped wrought iron table. Monsieur duPres's speckled brown hunting dogs lay at Barnabas's feet and looked up at him, panting, waiting for a crumb to drop. He tried to shoo them off with a nudge of his boot, but the dogs did not want to leave him.

In the afternoons, they withdrew to the library and spent hours reciting aloud the plays of William Shakespeare. As hard as he tried to push _Hamlet_ or _Macbeth_ upon her, Josette insisted on reading the comedies. Angelique was drafted into service to read the narration parts or the minor characters in _Much Ado About Nothing_, a _Comedy of Errors_, and _All's Well that Ends We__ll_. The recitation was tedious and slow, stopping often for Barnabas to explain a phrase or a word. Josette stumbled over the dialogue with astonishing frequency; Angelique could not understand how she could do so badly even while staring right at the page. Barnabas patiently coached a fidgety Josette who stared off at the flickering candle. In the quiet privacy of her mind, Angelique took to heart a phrase from a play's dialogue, _That I should love a bright particular star, and think to wed it; he is so ab__ove me._

At supper, every day, Monsieur Andre duPres would ask for a report. Barnabas would smile serenely as he lied, "She is doing wonderfully."

Angelique clearing the dishes caught his sideways glance. She liked to think that he was not lying after all, that he meant the compliment for her instead.

#

One evening in July, the two girls were in Josette's room. Angelique sat with a sheet of paper and a quill pen. She worked on the writing assignment that Barnabas had given to both of them. Out of the Holy Bible, she copied the ten commandments using her very best penmanship. With every stroke of ink, she imagined Barnabas reading it later and she wanted him to be proud. No, more than that, she wanted him to compare her cursive to Josette's and judge hers better.

Josette was occupied with sitting at her dressing table, combing her long chestnut hair and admiring her face in the mirror.

Softly murmuring aloud as she copied the typeset words, Angelique puzzled over the meaning. "'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.' Josette, do you think it means we should not make portraits?"

"Not make portraits?" Josette dabbed perfume on her throat. The scent of jasmine wafted through the room. "That's silly! Papa is going to commission an artist in Florence to do a portrait of me. Why would my papa do something that is against the ten commandments?"

Angelique continued, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God...' Josette, why do you think God would be jealous? It makes him sound like a spoiled little girl."

Josette turned around in her chair. "You must be reading it wrong. Are you sure those are the commandments? Where is 'do not murder,' and 'do not lie?'"

"They are here." She pointed with her fingertip. "And it also says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house...' What does covet mean?"

"I have no idea." Josette sprang out of her chair. "Let's ask Barnabas!"

"No, the hour is late. He must be in bed by now." In her haste to rise and chase after his mistress, Angelique dropped her quill pen. Ink splattered on the paper, ruining her sheet of perfect penmanship.

Together, they dashed down the corridor—Josette running ahead and Angelique failing to keep up with her. Their gauzy nightgowns billowed around and behind them like fairies. Their bare feet made no sound on the carpeting.

"Josette," she hissed in a whisper, trying one last time to catch her mistress's arm. "Don't disturb him!"

Stubborn and selfish as always, Josette pointed to the golden glow beneath the door. "He is awake. Look, a candle is still burning."

Two knocks, and Barnabas answered from within, "_Qui est-ce_?"

"It is Josette. I have a question about English."

"Of course," he said, switching to his native language. "Come in."

Josette pushed open the door and boldly swooped inside. Angelique followed her like a white shadow.

Barnabas sat on the window seat. He was fully dressed in his riding boots, gray breeches, green satin waistcoat and blousy shirt. On his lap, he held a wooden box packed with straw and crumpled paper. He was carefully arranging something in the package. Angelique looked closer. It was a wooden flute carved out of dark wood and varnished to a glossy shine.

He explained before either of them could ask, "It's a gift for my younger sister. Her birthday is coming in November and she'll be seven years old."

He spoke exclusively in English, these days, forcing Josette to keep up her lessons at all times of day.

Josette sat down beside him on the window seat. The swathes of her nightgown draped softly over his leather boots. She touched the flute with her fingertips. "It is lovely. I'm sure your sister is lovely."

"She is our family's most precious treasure. A jewel of great price."

"We will be great friends," Josette said cheerily. "We are the same age."

Barnabas looked up sharply from the gift box. "No, Josette, you misunderstood. I said, she is seven... not seventeen."

Josette's large brown eyes wavered back and forth, sparkling in the candlelight as she stared at him. "I don't understand. You are so very much older?"

He looked down. His hands wavered slightly as he placed the fitted lid on top of the wooden box. "There were... many... tragedies in the intermediate years. I would prefer not to speak of it."

Angelique's heart swelled with sympathy to see the pain written in the creases of his brow. If Josette were not in the way, she would have rushed to him and soothed his mood with her tender embrace.

Josette's gaze wandered away to the fireplace. "My mother died in a birth. The baby died too. Is your mother dead?"

"No, my mother is very much alive, thank you." Barnabas rose and crossed the room to the bureau. He put the wooden gift box on top of the drawers next to his wash basin. "You said you had a question?"

"Yes," Josette said. "Angelique and I were copying the ten commandments..."

Her eyes flared wide, glaring across the room at Josette's bold-faced lie. _Why can't anyone see her as I see her, a coquette who __will say or do anything to make herself look pleasing to the eyes of foolish men?_

"...and, what does 'covet' mean?"

Barnabas just laughed. "Josette you are so innocent, you'll never know the meaning of that word even if I explain it to you."

The gilded clock on the mantle chimed once. Barnabas startled and looked to the Roman numerals on the clock's face. "That can't be right! It's one o'clock in the morning? Oh, you girls should be in bed... That is, I meant to say... _your_ beds. Go on, off with you! Before someone sees you coming out of my room at this hour!"

"I don't understand," said Josette, resisting as he pushed her towards the door. "Why should we not be in your room? We are friends."

Angelique curtsied as she cast a sly, sideways glance to him. "I told her not to come."

To her surprise, he frowned at her with stern disapproval. She had never seen him in a dark mood before; he had never raised his voice to any of the servants or slaves. Angelique shrank away from the fierce fury in his eyes, even as her knees weakened and wished to buckle in surrender to his powerful rage.

"You should have tried harder, Angelique. Your mistress depends on you to take care of her, and that also means protecting her from a scandal."

Tears welled up in Angelique's eyes. Her image of him blurred through the watery waves. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just go!" Barnabas pushed them both to the door. "I'll see you both in the morning."

#

Summer ended, as all summers do. The month of August found the pair of girls at the harbor of Fort Royal waving their handkerchiefs in the sunny breeze. Seagulls and pelicans squabbled in mid-air. Together the girls wept openly, watching the sails fill with air on the three-masted ship taking their Barnabas away.

"Why can't he stay, Papa?" Josette wailed to her father, who also had come to the docks to oversee the loading of his cargo.

"This was only a temporary assignment, Josette. Don't be such a baby! He was here to teach you English, which he did. Now he is returning to his life in Maine."

"Maine," Josette repeated, staring off at the ship cruising on the aqua waters. It shrank to a smaller and smaller size on its way to the crisp horizon. "How far away is Maine?"

"Not very far, if they catch the trade winds and avoid the storms," her father answered. "About six weeks."

Josette wrote him letters, in English, and each Friday gave them as a packet wrapped in blue ribbons to Angelique to hand off to the carriage driver to put in the post. Josette dribbled rose water or jasmine perfume on the sealed envelopes. After she had taken possession of them, Angelique also dribbled a bit of her own tears and kisses over the wax seal. Not a word of her own was inscribed in ink but her thoughts and passions seeped from her fingers into the paper. She imagined him receiving the letters, breaking the wax, and opening the folds. He would scan over the words written by Josette but he would feel the touch of Angelique in the paper.

She stood on the docks, each Friday, to watch the ships sail away bound for New England. Her eyes gazed off at the sunlight glittering on the ocean and the sharp line of the horizon where water met the sky. She imagined him in a bright room far away. _You will come back to me, Barnabas Collins. You will not be able to resist._ The sea was blue blood in the veins of the world that connected her to him.

#


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

In late October 1793, the first letters of reply from Barnabas began to arrive. Written on stiff parchment, and sealed with a spot of blue wax, each one was addressed to Mlle. Josette duPres in bold calligraphy. Barnabas had a masterful handwriting to rival Thomas Jefferson himself. The "S" of Josette's name, in cursive, was a flamboyant sweep of the quill in perfect alignment with the lower tail of the "J", but Angelique let out a small quiet sigh to wish for him to write her name instead.

Josette snatched up the letters each time Jean-Baptiste brought them upstairs on a silver tray. She cracked the wax seal and spent all hours of the afternoon snuggled in the window seat to read them over and over by the golden light filtered in the window glass.

Later in the night, Angelique would sneak into Josette's room while she was at supper or in the parlor practicing her harpsichord. She unlatched the wood-and-leather box and opened its lid to reveal the purple velvet lining and a treasure of folded papers. One by one, she read them to herself and imagined Barnabas's deep voice reciting the words on the page.

They were not the letters of a lover, no, the narrative was like pages taken out of a journal. He described in English the town of Collinsport and the countryside of the province called Maine which was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He gave details of the family home, Collinwood, a two story manor house designed to resemble a Greek temple. He sketched in words the foundation stones being laid for a new larger mansion on a nearby hilltop. He wrote of the wild animals of the forest, the migration of Canadian geese, and the changing colors of the maple trees, "...their falling leaves as vivid as the flowers in your tropical garden."

One of many letters received in late November repeated some of the rhymes and poems that Barnabas was teaching to his little sister Sarah. "My father is not pleased that I teach her Milton. He prefers she learn aphorisms out of Poor Richard's Almanac, 'a penny saved is a penny earned,' and such. How was I ever born from such an unimaginative man, who has no appreciation for _Paradise Lost_? 'With thee conversing, I forget all time, all seasons, and their change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, with charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun...'"

Angelique slammed the lid of the letter box. If they were not written by his hand, she would have set fire to the whole pile. _Why does he never write about me? Why does he not inquire about me at all?_

#

On the third day after Christmas, in the marketplace of Fort Royal, she encountered the _Obeah_ woman of Mount Pelée buying a live chicken in a wicker cage. She approached the crone, whom she had not seen in the several years since she was thirteen. Now Angelique had grown taller, and the _Obeah_ woman seemed very small and hunched—a walking doll made in the image of herself.

"Auntie, may I ask of you a favor?" Her hands offered an exchange by kindly taking hold of the chicken cage and lifting the burden from the old woman's arm.

"I remember you," said the _Obeah_ woman in a raspy voice, the sound of a sea wave scraping on sand. "You are the hungry one."

Angelique smiled in confusion. "I'm not hungry, thank you. If you'd like, I'll cook you dinner. Shall I walk you home and prepare this chicken for you?"

They strolled together the sandy path leading away from the marketplace. They left behind the chatter of bright and busy voices, the comings and goings of sailors and natives, of masters and slaves, all going about in the sunshine of a warm green day in December. Briefly her mind wandered to thoughts of Barnabas's most recent letter complaining of something called "frost" and Angelique yearned to see such a magical thing for herself.

"What do you want?" the old woman grumbled.

"Simply to ask a question. I hope you know the answer. It would help me a great deal, and I would be most grateful."

The _Obeah_ woman grunted to ascend the slope. She still shuffled in the same twisting gait that Angelique remembered. She was still barefoot. Layers of large cotton veils wrapped her hunched body in vivid drapes of yellow, turquoise, pink, and green. A pale blue scarf bundled up her head. Now, she had to lean on a walking stick—a pole once used as a lever in a sugar press, cracked down the middle, and bound with a winding of coarse twine to make it whole once more.

"Whatever you want to know, I'm not sure I should tell you."

Angelique forced a laugh to try and lighten up the mood. She held the chicken cage in one hand and supported the old woman's elbow with the other. "I learned from my mistake! What I'm asking is a wonderful and joyous thing."

"Is it?"

"I want to know how to make a man fall in love with me."

The _Obeah_ woman glanced her way. Though her skin was as dark as coffee, she had greenish-hazel eyes set in bloodshot amber. Her blood heritage came from half of one world and half of another, just as her knowledge straddled the realm of spirits and the realm of mortals.

"Flirt with them as you're flirting with me. You'll have no trouble."

"I've tried that, but he wasn't interested. I need something more! How can I make sure of his attention? Surely you must know a way to turn his thoughts to me."

The _Obeah_ woman stopped in the middle of the path. "No child, that's not right. The power of _vodoun_ is not to force your will upon others, but to guide others—and yourself—into finding a balance between the living and the dead, between craving and peace."

The chicken in the cage clucked rapidly as if agreeing with the old woman. Angelique's rage boiled over. She dumped the cage roughly on the ground.

"You speak of peace? How can I be at peace without him?"

The crone bent over, with a grunt, to pick up the chicken cage herself. "That's the right question you should have asked me."

Angelique balled her hands into fists. "Will you teach me a love spell or not?"

"No, I will not help you twist a man's heart against his choice. Remember what happened the last time you tampered with things beyond your control."

The _Obeah_ woman left her behind. She crept up the path with effort, each step achieved with twisting her shoulder and plunking the stick into the sand. But like a turtle, step by step, she got farther and farther away. It would take hours but, eventually, she would make it home under her own power.

Angelique stood there trembling with rage. The warm winds of December swelled her thin skirts into a billowing cone around her legs. She felt herself expanding, opening her heart and mind to the awareness of _loa_ in the trees and the ghosts of men drowned in the sea; white men and black men all drowned alike. She felt older now, and wiser, than when she had raised the zombie of Josette's mother. This aching need in her heart was different—this would be love, not death.

"I won't spend my life alone like you!" she shrieked at the old woman's back. "I will be his! Yes, I will be his!"

#

Back at home, in her little room in the servants' quarters off the back of the kitchen, Angelique sat on the hearth stone and stoked a small bright fire. She whispered to the only true friends she had left in all the world: the deep sienna eyes that blinked in between the flames.

"Will you help me?"

_Of course._

"Tell me, what should I do to make Barnabas love me?"

_Fashion a doll of raw clay never touched by another's hands. Get a lock of hair from your intended. Get a spiderweb that is unbroken._

Angelique searched his empty room that had been closed up since his departure. The bed sheets had been changed and aired out in the sun, but other than that, the room was nearly untouched. She got down on her hands and knees and searched the carpet, picking through the weave with her fingertips. She went to the window seat and searched the cushions and the draperies.

Frantic and trembling with desperation, she finally went to the dressing table where he had kept his comb and shaving razor during the time he was here. She held almost no hope of finding a trace of him. The toiletries had been packed up and taken away. But then, she looked closely, her eyes widening to bright green circles. She noticed under the frame of the mirror, where it was inconvenient to wipe, in a fuzz of dust was a tiny black hair.

Grinning with triumph, Angelique pressed the strand of hair into the clay doll. She had a cobweb as a pale net on a twig taken from an acacia tree. She sat on the hearth stones, at midnight, long after the other servants of the kitchen had fallen asleep. She listened to the instructions from the whispers in the flames and repeated the spell as the sexless voice told it to her. She felt the surge of warm power in her chest as her desire went into the clay. She rotated the figurine's sightless face towards herself.

"Barnabas Collins, you will love me," she murmured to the figurine in her hands. "You will desire me. You will want nothing else but to come back to me."

#

In the third week of January, in the year 1794, the coachman delivered yet another letter from Barnabas to Josette. It looked the same as all the others, addressed in the bold cursive calligraphy with a small spot of wax to seal the fold. Josette seized it off the silver tray and was about to skip off with it when Angelique caught her in the hallway.

"Mademoiselle, would it be an intrusion to ask if you would read Monsieur Barnabas's letter aloud to me?"

"Why?" Josette asked.

"His letters always seem to make you happy, and I want to know what makes you happy."

Josette's confusion melted into a broad smile. "All right, I would love to share it with you! Come!"

Together the young women sat like sisters on the patio. Warm sunny breezes stirred their coiffed hair and ruffled the lacy cuffs of Josette's sleeves as she held up the letter and read it aloud. Although it was Josette's voice, they were his words, and Angelique with eyes half closed imagined him at a writing desk with a quill in his hand and these thoughts forming in his mind.

"We had a birthday party today for my sister Sarah who is eight years old. What a delightful child she is, full of gentleness and kindness. She has a pet Spaniel that she adores, but the poor little thing has fallen ill in the cold weather. My father wants to put the dog out of its misery, but of course this sends Sarah into a fit of tears that even he can't bear. Who knew? My father actually has a heart, when it comes to her."

_Not a word about me_, Angelique thought bitterly. _Still, he does not even inquire if I am alive or what I am doing. Does he think of me at all?_

"Frost is coming early this year," Josette continued reading aloud. "The bears are already in hibernation. Squirrels are packing away their nuts. By the time this letter reaches you, my home Collinwood and the whole landscape for miles around will be buried under mounds of snow. You could never imagine such a scene. If you were to see it, perhaps you might compare it to the pristine sand dunes of your beach, if sand dunes were made of ice."

_I must see what is happening now_, Angelique thought as Josette's voice droned on in English. She waited anxiously all the way to the end, for Josette to read aloud down to the last words on the page. "As always, your friend, Barnabas Collins."

"Thank you, mademoiselle. That was delightful." Angelique shot to her feet. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

"Of course." Josette reclined in the wrought-iron patio chair. She cuddled the letter close to her bosom and resumed reading it again, silently, to herself.

#

Outside the threshold of her room in the servants' quarters, Angelique picked up a pinch of dirt. She entered the dim stillness of the room and spit into the palm of her hand to make a muddy slime. From her skirt's pocket, she took out a single sheet of paper—some of Josette's letter stationery. Using the mud paste, she drew on the paper two ovals, and inside those she drew two circles, and inside those two dots.

She kindled and lit a fire in the fireplace, patiently watching it blossom and grow, slowly feeding it larger and larger sticks. When she judged it to be large enough, she tossed in her crude drawing of a pair of eyes. The paper curled. Sparkles devoured it from the corners, eating inward to the center, turning the paper black, and shriveling it into a cinder.

Angelique spoke to the cinders breaking apart and floating in the smoke. "Eyes of fire. Eyes of night. Be my eyes where I cannot go. Show me what I cannot see: my beloved. Show me Barnabas Collins."

Her mind reeled as if outdoors too long in the summer sunshine. Her sights blurred. The room where she sat faded away. Colors changed. Brightness dimmed. The plaster walls darkened, then came a-light as wood paneling covered in brocade paper.

His bedroom was in disarray. Clothes lay discarded on the floor or draped over the backs of chairs. Books were open on the table. The blue blankets of his canopy bed were tangled and crumpled. Barnabas wore stockings but no shoes. His breeches were not fastened at the knees and the tie strings dangled. His waistcoat half unbuttoned showed the puckered gathers of his blousy shirt. Without a cravat to bind his collar, his throat was exposed. His hair not combed, his jaw speckled with dark sandpaper stubble, it looked as if he had not washed in days.

He paced about restlessly. He gripped the posts of his canopy bed with both hands and stared at the empty blankets. His mouth sagged open. He hunched forward and seemed to be a man in throes of a fever. Then he pushed away from the bed and rushed to the window. There he gripped the draperies. He stared at glass panes obscured by white frost.

Angelique thrilled to see him this way. _He is maddened with desire for me. Why does he not come for me?_

Barnabas went to his writing table. He dipped his feathered quill into the ink well. Her mystic eyes lurked behind his shoulder to see what he started to write. _My beautiful Angelique, your hair as golden as a spring morning, your eyes as green as the Caribbean Sea..._ Barnabas stopped writing. He violently crumpled the page and tossed the ball to the floor. He dipped his quill again. _How shall I compare you to the sun or the sea, my Angelique? You are a goddess more beautiful than anything in this world..._ Once again, he stopped writing and crumpled the paper between his hands. Putting the quill to the paper, he wrote her name, _Angeliq__ue, Angelique, _again and again. He had filled half a page with it, when his attention lifted to the door.

A small girl entered. She wore a blue striped dress and knitted shawl around her shoulders. A lacy bonnet capped her long blonde hair. She carried the wooden flute that he had bought in Martinique. The little girl smiled delighted to see him. Barnabas waved her off and continued writing. His sister Sarah put the flute to her mouth—having only mystic eyes, not ears, Angelique could not hear the music.

Barnabas looked up from the paper. He flicked his hand at her more forcefully. By the movement of his jaw, he appeared to be shouting at her. The little girl broke into tears, whirled about in a flare of skirts, and dashed out of the room.

Angelique blinked to break off the sight of her faraway eyes. She took a few deep breaths to settle herself back into her own self, here, in the kitchen of Andre duPres's plantation house in Martinique.

"He has gone utterly mad with desire for me," she said to the flames.

_Isn't that what you wanted?_

"No," she said in a trembling voice. "No, it breaks my heart to see him this way. He is not himself."

_He will come to you. He will devour you with his passions. Isn't that what you wanted?_

"No," she said again, more forcefully. "I don't want him like a drunken sailor half out of his mind. I want him as he was, when he was here in the garden reading poetry or in the library reciting the plays of Shakespeare. I want him to come to me happily of his own free will, not as a living zombie."

Angelique took the little clay figurine out of her skirt's pocket and unwrapped it from the kerchief. She asked the flames, "If I destroy it, will that break the spell?"

_No, it will consume his heart and mind beyond all repair, and he really will be a zombie._

She gasped and pulled back. "I couldn't do that to him! I could never do anything to harm him! Tell me, how do I break the spell?"

_Are you certain this is what you wish?_

"Yes, yes! Tell me!"

_You must take the figurine to the seashore at dawn, __and as the sun rises out of the eastern horizon, you must wash the figure in the salty waves._

Angelique sneaked out of the house just before dawn, when the birds were starting to awaken. In sandals, she trotted down the path to the shore. She found a secluded place between the white sand dunes. She knelt into the surf, her skirt getting soaked and wicking up to the waist. She put the figurine in the shallow turquoise water just as the grand crescent of glorious glowing sun rose out of the eastern horizon and dominated all the sky with its scarlet glow. The figurine washed and dissolved. Soon its shape softened and crumbled apart in her hands. Clay became as sand under the water. Angelique washed her hands of it.

#


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

A whole year passed from one January to the next. It was an eternal purgatory of sunshine and bland green days that flowed unchanging from month to month. Gentle turquoise tides caressed the white sand beaches. Tropical flowers bloomed and shed their petals. Josette celebrated her 18th birthday at the center of a swarm of gentlemen suitors, but only a select few were allowed to kiss her fingertips before they were swatted away.

Josette filled two lacquered boxes with letters from Barnabas Collins, and by September 1794 she started packing a third. The salutation gradually changed from Dear Josette to My Dear Josette to My Dearest Josette, and his signature dropped Your Friend to become Yours Truly. Always the same clear handwriting—bold and slanted consistently to the right—his letters no longer narrated the mundane events in the province of Maine. He wrote to them from his travels to foreign ports in Europe. The Collinses avoided the turmoil in France, of course, and journeyed instead to mysterious locations called Austria, Holland, Egypt, and Kashmir. He filled six pages describing the ruins of the Parthenon in Greece and ranting about the Ottoman Turks for their neglect.

"I want to send letters of reply," Josette whined frequently. "But I don't know where he is! Will he ever return to Martinique?"

"I'm sure he will, mademoiselle," Angelique replied. "I'm sure he will."

On Christmas Eve, on a warm starry night clear of clouds, Angelique alone stood at the crest of a grassy hill. She gazed off at the vast empty sea. Breezes stirred her thin cotton gown around her legs. _You must come back to me, my darling. The seven wonders of the world cannot give to you what my love can offer__. Return to me, Barnabas Collins. Return to find your destiny in my arms._

#

In May of the following year, 1795, Andre duPres received word that Joshua Collins the patriarch of the family and his younger brother Jeremiah would visit Martinique on business. Josette asked, "Is Barnabas to accompany them, papa?" to which Andre shrugged and tossed the letter aside.

Each time they heard word of a foreign ship pulling into the port, Josette and Angelique rushed out of the house, down the sandy path and through the iron gate. They watched the carriage road for whoever might arrive. They would stand in the warm breeze for at least an hour, until their giggles fell silent and the bright twinkles in their eyes went dark. "Perhaps tomorrow," Josette said, and Angelique walking back to the house with her, agreed.

Then came the day that the spindly black carriage rolled up and over the hill. Its coach was like the body of a gigantic spider with wheels for legs. Six long-necked steeds had slick hides as black as wet seals. Angelique cried out, "It's him! It's him!" tugging on Josette's sleeve.

Josette fussed with her hair and lace shawl. "Do you think he remembers me?"

"Of course he remembers you, mademoiselle," she said with a sly smirk. _But he remembers me in a different __way._

"Should I have worn the blue dress or perhaps the peach?" Josette's large brown eyes darted back and forth, from Angelique to the approaching carriage, now becoming frantic. "Why did I choose this yellow gown? I look awful, like a giant dandelion!"

"I'm sure Monsieur Barnabas won't give a second thought to what you're wearing," Angelique assured her, even as she secretly agreed that yellow did not suit Josette's complexion. Her own simple gown was a mild sea green to bring out the hue of her large eyes. Lace cuffs matched the needlework pattern of the crocheted cap on top of her blond curls._ I broke the enchantment, but the memory of it will linger in him. When he looks at me, again, he will recall what he felt in those __dark days of winter. He will see __me in a new way, and he will begin to fall in love with me by his own choice._

The carriage stopped. The footman, with one hand neatly tucked behind his back, gave a deep courtly bow as he opened the door.

First Jeremiah emerged, the same as Angelique remembered him. He wore a long brown tailcoat over a green waistcoat. His congenial smile seemed a bit weary; his attitude relaxed and at ease. "Good day, ladies," he called out in halting French with a strong American accent.

Josette answered in English, perhaps hoping that the other gentleman inside the carriage would hear. "We have been looking forward to your arrival, Mister Collins. Welcome back to Martinique!"

"Thank you." Jeremiah offered them a quick bow, then his attention turned to the other gentleman emerging. The carriage rocked as he came forth and stepped down to the running board, and then the ground.

Not Barnabas, he was a much older gentleman, with a square flat face, and small eyes that seemed to be always squinting. His hair was silvery blonde and combed back severely from his receding hairline. His bushy sideburns were the most hair on his entire skull. He wore a long coat of vivid blue, a scarlet waistcoat, and white breeches. Despite the heat, a full length gray cloak draped off one shoulder. In his left hand, he sported a cane with a silver knob.

"Splendid, just splendid," the older man said. His small eyes rolled about to survey the grand columns of the plantation house, the majestic boughs of the date palms and acacia trees, the flower beds bursting with color, and the two young ladies standing at the gate.

Andre duPres emerged from the house. He hopped off the porch steps. His broad girth lumbered half waddling down the path. "Joshua Collins! And Jeremiah! Welcome to my home. Please, don't stand on ceremony, come inside and rest yourselves. I'm sure it's been a long journey."

"Pleasant enough, as such journeys go," said Joshua Collins who strolled forward, swinging and tapping his stylish walking cane on the way.

Jeremiah hesitated by the carriage. The coachmen labored to remove the trunks and leather satchels from the rack behind the rear wheels. But it was not the luggage that captured Jeremiah's attention. He kept staring away and behind at the road from where they had come.

Joshua, entering the shadow of the house, stopped and turned back for his younger brother. "Jeremiah! Are you coming inside, or do you intend to spend the remainder of the day standing in the road?"

"He was right behind us..."

Angelique gasped with the thrill. Josette gripped her arm, too. Both ladies joined Jeremiah in gazing off and away at the packed-sand road. The fringe of grasses rippled on the hillside.

"You'll do him no good by standing there," Joshua said, more sternly.

"But..."

"If my son wishes to dilly-dally about and stop to pick flowers on the way, then that is his business! Now, Jeremiah, you risk insulting our host if you do not join me in the parlor this very moment."

Joshua Collins and Andre duPres continued up the porch steps and into the house. Jeremiah, with one more forlorn backward glance, began his sauntering stroll into the garden path.

Hooves padded the soft sands in the distance. A horse grunted from just beyond the rise. Angelique gripped the garden fence and leaned forward. The spikes of the wrought iron bars were digging into her chest as if to be impaled, but she did not care. She had to see... She had to be the first to see.

A black horse surged up and over the hill. Barnabas leaned down into the mane, and the horse opened its stride. He galloped down the slope at a fearsome, thundering pace. Angelique with a thrill of desire thought of the Greek myth of the god Hades arising out of the Underworld on a black chariot pulled by horses such as this one, coming to seize the innocent Persephone, snatch her out of her mother's arms, and drag his unwilling bride down into the abyss where he would make her a Queen.

He reined in at the last moment, just before he would collide with the carriage. The horse tossed its head and stomped its hooves in place, restless and eager to keep on going—faster and faster—to sprout black wings and fly on through the day and into the night. "Whoa, whoa," he said to his mount while loudly patting the neck.

"Barnabas!" Josette waved her lacy handkerchief at him.

"There you are," his uncle Jeremiah exclaimed. "We were beginning to worry if pirates had abducted you."

He swung a leg over and hopped to dismount, landing sprightly on his feet. Effortlessly, his wardrobe straightened itself out. The dovetails of his long black coat fell into place, hanging to the back of his knees. He wore dark gray breeches and a waistcoat of deep plum. A gold watch fob dangled off the right-hand pocket. The ride had brought a rosy glow to his sun-tanned cheeks. Angelique's blood quickened at his approach; he was more exquisite than she had remembered. She thrilled to the strength of his stride, his piercing dark eyes, his aquiline nose, and his gentle smile.

Josette rushed into his arms. He caught her politely at the elbows and held her off just enough that their torsos did not connect but neither did he release his hold on her.

"Barnabas, why didn't you write me that you were coming!"

"I wasn't sure until the very last minute." He tilted his head, regarding her from a different angle. "Your English has improved. Have you been practicing?"

"Yes! My Aunt Natalie and I speak in English almost all the time, now."

Angelique added, "So do I."

Barnabas glanced her way. His eyes briefly flared black fire, and she knew that he remembered the crazed dreams of desiring her. More than a year had passed since her spell had driven him to madness, but time had not cooled his ardor... or hers. Angelique restrained her urge to throw herself into his arms and shove Josette aside. _Any moment now,_ she thought. _He will let her go and come to me._

Instead, he returned his soft admiration to Josette and arm-in-arm, they strolled up the flower-lined path toward the house. "My dear Miss duPres, you can't begin to comprehend how delighted I am to return to the flowering shores of Martinique!"

#

Andre duPres swaggered ahead of the group, leading the way into the grand parlor. All three Collins gentlemen were a head taller than the master. They had well-fit and slender physiques. Their waistcoats buttoned tightly, whereas the master's honey-pot belly swelled against the constraints of his clothes that slaves were constantly mending. When Andre spoke English, the lyrical quality of voice flattened out to a monotone, and he sounded like a man talking in his sleep.

"Do come in, gentlemen, we have a luncheon prepared."

A pair of boys—purchased recently from a cotton merchant in New Orleans—stood at attention by the connecting door to the parlor. They dressed in the finest satin breeches, white stockings, avocado-colored waistcoats, and their bleached cravats contrasted sharply the deep brown hue of their faces. Angelique knew their names, Denis and Pierre, and that they had been well-schooled in the etiquette of a gentleman's table. In the three weeks since their acquisition, Denis and Pierre had managed to offend almost every servant in the duPres household with their superior knowledge of the placement of silverware, the proper way to fold a napkin, the arrangement of condiment dishes, and the sequence of a meal's courses. As such, the other servants of the household had abandoned them to prepare and serve the refreshments entirely on their own. This was to be their test, the first occasion to entertain foreign visitors. Angelique saw through their stiff posture and stoic faces the jitters of slaves who feared to fail their master. One spill, one fumble, one crepe not folded correctly, and Andre would sell them off again or put them to work in the sugar mill. Angelique almost felt sorry for their predicament, but then her attention turned to Barnabas.

Josette skipped backwards and tugged at Barnabas's arm. Like a grand horse being tethered by a child, he allowed himself to be led along the corridor beneath the stairs. She said, "You must come and see the jonquils! They are in full bloom and their fragrance is enough to make you faint!"

"Oh my." Barnabas chuckled through his smile. "I should not wish to faint."

His uncle Jeremiah Collins entered the parlor with Andre, but the older man Joshua paused at the connecting doorway. He rapped his cane sharply on the floorboards. "Barnabas!"

"Yes, father?"

"Where are you going?"

With his only free hand, he gestured helplessly to Josette tugging him along. "I'm going to see the garden."

"Garden!" his father snorted. "Bah! You already know what's there. Now, come in with us and join the discussion. If you're going to inherit my business someday, you'll need to learn the art of negotiation."

"I will, I will, very soon." Barnabas walked sideways, a sort of dancing step, as he continued to follow Josette's lead and keep up a conversation with his father at the same time. "We'll just be a minute!"

Joshua's thin mouth frowned as a flat line. "A minute, and a minute, and a minute turns to hours with you."

Barnabas shrugged helplessly surrendering to the lady's will. He ducked underneath the shadows of the stairs and was lost to view.

Angelique followed a few paces behind on the way to the garden. She had only reached the base of the stairs, when the Countess duPres called out from the second floor landing. "Angelique! Angelique!" She gripped the round end of the banister, holding back her urge to ignore the woman and keep going into the garden. If only she could pretend that she had not heard, but of course that was impossible. The countess's voice carried into every crevasse, upstairs and down.

"Yes, madame?"

Countess duPres struck a grand pose at the top of the stairs. Her house gown was pleated at the shoulders and spread into a broad cone of green-and-gold brocade. A crocheted shawl draped about her shoulders. Her auburn hair was loosely coiffed into a head scarf. She was not prepared to greet the gentlemen, obviously, but a half-dressed countess was a lady in great need of services. Angelique's heart sank at the sight of her.

"I cannot find my deck of Tarot cards," the countess said. "Where did you put them?"

Sunlight flashed briefly from the rear of the house. The double-doors opened to the garden. Barnabas and Josette went outside, and the doors closed behind them.

"I'm sure I can't recall touching your cards," Angelique replied. "Have you looked in the top drawer of your bureau?"

"Yes I have looked everywhere in my room. I must find them! Come upstairs and help me."

Angelique shifted on her feet. "Now, madame?"

"Yes, now! I wish to do a reading of the cards, now that the American gentlemen have arrived."

There was nothing to do but obey, to bow and pretend to smile. Angelique raised the hem of her gown and made the climb up the plush carpeting that smelled faintly of mold.

The grand open staircase curved slightly like a cow's horn, wider at the base and tapering at the top. The roundabout course guided her straight into the countess's reach. Natalie duPres flapped her hand in a commanding gesture, "Come along, hurry!" and launched off to the second-floor corridor with a flare of her brocade house gown. The trailing train swept the floor. Angelique had to skip aside to avoid stepping on her mistress's hem.

The second floor of the plantation house had grand windows with wrought-iron grills over the panes to reinforce them in hurricane season. Lace curtains shined like etched glass in the sunlight. The walls were painted white and decorated with stencils of pale blue and yellow as in Versailles, the Madame duPres had often said. Nothing but pastel hues were allowed. White candlesticks were mounted in brass sconces, and every few feet was a vase bursting with cut orchids or lilies. Angelique spotted a shriveled brown leaf in one bouquet and, without missing a beat in her step, plucked the blemish as she passed.

Countess duPres had indeed searched her room. Every drawer was open, every chair cushion overturned. Her clothes were dumped in the middle of the floor in a heap. Angelique sighed weariness knowing that she would be the one to pick it all up later.

"Where are they? Where did you put them?"

"I told you, madame." Angelique held back her urge to scold the older woman like a child. "I did not put your Tarot cards anywhere. The last time I saw you playing with them..."

"I do not 'play' with them!" The countess raised her chin and narrowed her eyes as if she had just eaten something very sour. "They are tools of divination as essential to me as the carpenter's hammers."

Angelique curtsied an apology. "I meant to say, the last time I saw you divining with them, you were having afternoon tea by the window."

"Yes, I looked there already."

"Shall we look again?" Angelique went to the bay window. The niche curved outward with a built-in cabinet seat and a semi-circle cushion. Windows of exquisitely curved glass panes fit the ribs of framework. Sheer curtains hung in overlapping layers of gauze and lace.

The window seat overlooked the garden. Angelique flipped the latch and pushed both sections of the panes outward. A warm breeze swelled the diaphanous curtains. Songbirds chirped in the trees. Always, the constant hush of the sea mingled with the rustle of branches. In the distance, the church bell clanged the hour. From the garden directly below, she could hear Barnabas and Josette talking.

Immediately, she saw the deck of Tarot cards on the window sill, carelessly tucked behind the dangling cords of the curtain's drawstrings. But she said nothing and began a performance of making great efforts to thoroughly search the crevasses of the window seat's cushion.

"My uncle Jeremiah has just returned from Bombay," Barnabas said to Josette, his strong voice easily carried on the warm breeze. "The truth is, he failed to negotiate a potentially lucrative contract with the British East India Company, but my father doesn't seem bothered by it in the slightest. It's a financial loss but something of a moral victory. You see, my father is quite the patriot. He fought for the revolution, you know, and he was not very enthusiastic about my uncle's efforts to bargain for silks, or spices, or Darjeeling tea, if it means putting a single coin in the treasury of ol' King George the Third. My father has steadfastly refused to drink a drop of English tea in the last twenty years!"

Josette giggled and her voice scattered on the breeze. "Forgive me, but I do not wish to hear about your uncle or your father. Tell me about your latest travels?"

"Oh we just made a stop in Morocco. My father bought us all walking canes. You saw his, the black rod with the silver knob, like the thing that the old Calvinist ministers used to swagger about with and knock the heads of parishioners when they fell asleep during sermons. I think he wanted something more stylish for beating the servants. What an appallingly cruel master my father can be, at times. I have made a personal vow to never raise a hand to a servant of mine. I never have, and I never will."

Josette pinched the ruffles of her skirt and tilted her head in that way she often did when her mind was wandering.

"Uncle Jeremiah thought his walking cane to be pretentious and put it away for 'special occasions' as he politely phrased it. He's a decent, modest fellow—my uncle. Hard to believe those two are brothers."

"And yours?" she asked. "Where is your walking cane?"

"Oh, it's with the luggage. I couldn't very well carry it, riding the horse. I'll show it to you later. It has a curved handle of gold-plated solid silver, die-cast in the shape of a wolf's head. My father strongly preferred me choosing a less Gothic design, so of course, I had to get it."

Angelique leaned over the window sill and gazed downward, seeing them viewed from above. They sat on a white granite bench almost directly below her. Blossoms in every color surrounded them in a haphazard artist's palette of purples, scarlets, yellows, and blues in every variation of hue, offset by the rich emerald green of the grass. Sunlight broke into speckles through the fruit trees. Josette's pale yellow skirts spread around her in a semi-circle like a jonquil blossom herself. Barnabas in his black suit was the only spot of darkness at the center of it all.

"And while we were in Morocco," he said. "I purchased another trinket as a gift for you, my dear."

"For me?" Josette gripped his dark sleeve. "What is it?"

Barnabas leaned back slightly. "Oh, you'll have to be patient. I'm waiting for a very special occasion before I give it to you."

Then he pursed his lips and whistled a pretty little minuet tune, a bit like what the Countess duPres often played on the harpsichord. His whistle was as clear as a piccolo. Angelique did not recognize the melody that skipped up and down the scales like the bird tracks of a sandpiper on the beach. The tune was both pleasant and disturbing, the sort of melody that one could listen to for hours and be lost in a fantasy from which there was no return.

"Can you at least give me a hint of what it is? A jewelry box? A mirror for my dressing table?"

Barnabas stood up. "Forgive me, but I must rejoin my father in the business discussions, although I would much rather stay here with you."

"Until this evening at supper?"

"The hours will be an eternity waiting to see you again." He raised her hand, bowed forward, and brought her fingers up to meet his lips.

No sooner had they touched but Josette pulled her hand away. She snapped open a lace fan and fluttered it in front of her face. "Oh, monsieur!"

Angelique scowled darkly down at them. _Foolish girl. If he were to kiss my hand, I would not pull away._

#


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The master should have hired more servants, or borrowed more slaves, to make the elaborate preparations for Josette's 19th birthday party. But he was either too miserly, or too proud, to allow his neighbors and business partners to suspect that his current staff was inadequate to the fantasy he demanded them to create. Two weeks of frantic days and sleepless nights climaxed in a warm evening on the last day of June.

Josette slept in late on her birthday, almost until noon. She awakened with a smile when Angelique brought a breakfast tray to her bed.

"Guests are already arriving, mademoiselle," Angelique told her.

"Who?"

"You'll have to come downstairs and see."

Josette sipped her freshly squeezed orange juice but merely poked at her miniature fruit tarts. Her large brown eyes roved over the array of guava and mango slices, butter croissants, and pudding cups. "It's too much! I shouldn't eat such a feast if I'm going to fit into my gown."

"And there's more food at the party," Angelique said, resisting an urge to cast a spell that would cause Josette to swell up like a puffer fish.

"It's impossible," Josette fretted. "Why must you torture me, today of all days? Take it away!"

With a polite curtsey, she removed the silver tray from Josette's lap. She envisioned going out the back door of the kitchen, setting the tray down in the dirt, and letting the master's speckled hunting hounds lap it all up. At least the dogs appreciated a good meal.

Josette and Angelique spent the next hour fussing over getting her dressed. First came the corset lacing and stockings and petticoats, then came the undergown of dotted blue silk. The outer dress of stiff crinkled satin was dyed to the color of raw salmon that seemed lighter in the gathered swells where the sunlight reflected and a darker orangish-rouge in the creases.

Lace frills around her collar-line had to be draped just so... The delicate needlework like a spider's web extended beyond the seam of her sleeves. Each time Josette picked at the way her long curls fell about her shoulders, the lace went askew.

"Hold still, please, mademoiselle," Angelique scolded.

Josette sat at her dressing table, staring into the gilded oval mirror to supervise Angelique's work. "The ribbons don't match my gown."

"On the contrary, the colors go very well together." One after another, Angelique tied several little bows into Josette's dark curls with pale green ribbons. "The countess herself selected them."

"Oh, very well." Josette dabbed a little bit of her perfume to her throat. The strong scent of jasmine wafted through the room.

At last, stepping into silver satin slippers with white rosettes on the toes, Josette was ready to make her appearance at the party. She descended the grand staircase slowly. Angelique followed at a respectful distance.

Planks set on barrels and draped in white linen created a temporary banquet table in the garden. Sunshine made the whiteness of the tablecloth almost painful to behold. Silver platters and dishes flashed brightly. Crystal goblets twinkled in fragments of little rainbows. All of the agony and labor that went into this feast, only Angelique knew. Jean-Baptiste clearly developed a backache from bowing every time he opened the door. Fishermen had hauled in nets of shrimp and clams and whitefish; slaves had gutted and boiled the fish into a hearty bouillabaisse. Angelique thought of the arms that had gone numb in whisking the whites of eggs into stiff meringue; the shoulders that had gone sore in churning cream into butter; the fingers nicked by paring knives as guava and papaya and mangoes were peeled. While the cook Alexandre took an afternoon nap, the slave boys Denis and Pierre constantly waved palm fronds to chase off the persistent flies.

"Happy birthday, my dear child." Andre duPres lifted Josette's hand and escorted her out from beneath the lattice awning that dripped with thickly woven jasmine vines. Josette emerged into the sunshine to greet her dozens and dozens of guests. Her dark hair shined like shavings of milk chocolate candy.

Countess duPres joined them. She wore a grand feathered hat and a satin gown with stuffed pads at the hips to give the illusion of a pannier—the fashion of Marie Antoinette that should have been extinguished from the world when the Queen of France's head toppled under the guillotine almost two years ago.

"She's hardly a child, Andre," said the countess.

Angelique heard one of the guests mutter, in English, "I'll say."

She turned to look for who had spoken and found a tall, handsome American in a blue-and-white Navy uniform. He had thick brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. When he smiled, his teeth gleamed as white as his bleached trousers. But as pleasant as he was to look at, Angelique's attention drifted past the Navy man to his companion: the black-haired gentleman in a maroon coat.

Barnabas nudged the Navy man in the ribs and gave him a stern scowl. "Mind your tongue, Nathan, or I shall have to call you out and give you a lesson in how to treat a lady."

Lieutenant Nathan Forbes just laughed and clapped Barnabas on the shoulder. "Don't be so serious, my friend. It's a party!"

Guided by her father, Josette mingled into the crowd. She curtsied and received polite kisses on her hand. She accepted their congratulations and birthday well-wishes, and graciously thanked each one of them for coming. Gentlemen and their wives had traveled to the island from plantations on other islands in the Caribbean. They had brought their daughters of various ages, a little older or a little younger than Josette, to giggle and compare the fashion of each others' gowns.

They also brought their sons. Slender and milk-faced versions of Barnabas wore similar tailcoats and breeches, with golden watch fobs dangling from the pockets of their satin waistcoats. The young men flocked around Josette, nudging each other in their efforts to be the one to take her hand. They spoke to her in French, and she impressed them all by replying in English.

Angelique watched Barnabas standing across the broad expanse of the garden. He was blocked by the rules of etiquette. As the son of a business partner and not on the official list of Josette's suitors, he could not approach her just yet. Between them were impassable barriers of a banquet table, the granite fountain, and stone planter boxes of jonquils, birds of paradise, and geraniums. His large dark eyes stared at Josette with such a longing hunger that it pained Angelique's heart to see. He gazed to her as if from the shores of his distant home in Maine, and all of the Atlantic ocean spanned between him and what he wanted.

_Forget her_, Angelique cried out to him from the privacy of her own thoughts. _Don't you see? Josette is not interested in you. Why don't you turn around and__ look at me, Barnabas? I'm right here!_

"Would you care for a canape?" Angelique offered a silver tray loaded with tiny round pastries topped with cream cheese, foie gras, and chopped crab meat. Each was a miniature work of art, garnished with a sprig of mint.

"No thank you," Barnabas said, his eyes still fixed upon Josette who strolled beyond the fountain. He tilted his head to get a better view around the fountain's statue. "I'm not very hungry."

"I am!" Nathan plucked up a canape and popped the whole thing in his mouth. He chewed a little and rolled his eyes with pleasure. "What is the matter with you, Barnabas? These are delicious!"

Several of the other Navy men, in their identical blue uniforms, took the cue that lunch was served. They strolled over to the banquet table and attacked with gusto. They shamelessly scooped into each platter, happily advancing down the length of the buffet. They heaped their plates full of buttered bread, grilled fish on skewers, shrimp scampi, mango salad, and chicken drumsticks simmered in a rich gravy darkened to sienna yellow with curry spices imported from India.

Angelique stepped a little nearer to him, close enough to savor the warm scent of sunlight in his velvet coat. "May I bring you something else, monsieur? Some wine? We have sherry, port, burgundy, rum, and a very special bottle of champagne."

"Coffee, thank you," Barnabas said.

Nathan turned his inviting grin at her while reaching for another canape. "I'd like some rum, _see-vuh play_."

Angelique inclined her head, slightly; this Navy man was not worthy of a curtsey. "The bottle is over there."

"Oh." He faked a childish pout of disappointment even as his blue eyes still sparkled with merriment. "You would get anything for my friend Barnabas but you won't get it for me? You've wounded me to the heart, my dear lady."

She looked down to the grass. "I'm not a lady, sir."

Nathan chuckled from low in his throat. "That's no matter to me. You are as beautiful as Aphrodite emerging from the sea... that golden hair... those jade green eyes... I must know your name!"

"Excuse me, sir." She carried away her tray of canapes to the other guests.

Behind her, she heard Barnabas's powerful voice scolding him, "Can you behave yourself for one afternoon, Nathan? You're not in an ale tavern down at the wharves."

"No," said Nathan. "But we were last night, you and I, and you weren't such a stuffy old codger then!"

"Please, don't bring that up."

"You amaze me, friend Barnabas, how you can be so different by night and by day. Look at you, all buttoned up and innocent. If that dainty lady over there could have seen you in the company we kept..."

Barnabas broke away. A few quick strides, and he emerged from the shade of the acacia tree. He rushed to the fountain and stood there aimlessly staring at the water trickling out of the granite pitcher held by the statue of a young nymph.

Nathan sauntered after him in unhurried pursuit. His long blue cape, hanging off his left shoulder, swelled and swept the lawn. He picked up a glass of rum on the way and sipped from it as he drew near to his friend.

Angelique maneuvered herself to the other side of the fountain. With offering her tray of canapes to the party-goers, she pretended not to pay attention but she keenly listened to every word.

"Don't be angry at me, friend." Nathan leaned his hips against the edge of the fountain. By slouching he warped the crisp lines of his uniform's broad lapels. "I'm just speaking the truth."

"There's a proper time for the truth," Barnabas told him. "And a time for discretion."

"For men like you, maybe, but not for men like me. No one notices who I associate with. No one gossips about me. Or maybe they do, but I don't care."

"Sometimes I envy you such anonymity," Barnabas said so quietly that Angelique could hardly hear through the sprinkling of the fountain.

"I know." Nathan clapped him on the shoulder, hard and loud. "You poor dandy, you're being forced to choose between ladies and women. There's the porcelain dolls you must chase and the rag dolls who come to you willingly."

Angelique followed the course of Barnabas's long-distance stare across the sunlit garden's broad lawn, to a point beyond the flowering barrier of hibiscus, zinnias, roses, and anthuriums. An overhanging bougainvillea was a spectacular canopy of vivid magenta. In its dappled shade, the birthday girl Josette perched on a garden bench. Half a dozen young men surrounded her, in velvet coats and lace cuffs, all vying for her attention.

Nathan continued, "How does a man like you decide between a lady of the evening and a lady of the morning?"

"Must I choose?" Barnabas answered as he continued to stare at Josette. His words came slowly, drawn out with careful thought. "Don't we, as men, exist in both the daylight and the night in equal measure? Can't I have both the moon and the sun?"

Nathan laughed out loud. A few heads turned to notice them. "Oh Barnabas, you rapscallion!"

"If you'll excuse me, now, I need to offer my congratulations to Miss duPres."

"Of course you do," Nathan said, still laughing.

Sadly, Angelique watched him make the long journey around the beds of blooming flowers, across the lawn, and underneath the drape of the bougainvillea. He bowed to Josette and said a few words. By a casual gesture of her arm, she invited him to join the men gathered around her. Some were seated on the bench with her. Some stood behind her. A few others lounged in the grass to gaze up at her with adoration. Barnabas sat down at the edge of her gown's trailing hem, and his legs bent off to the side like a fledgling bird fallen out of its nest.

There he stayed, at Josette's feet, for the rest of the afternoon. Angelique's heart broke with pity to see him beg for her attention and be ignored. _Have some pride, my darling! You are not a hungry hound that licks up __the crumbs fallen from her table._

#

The sun passed over the roof of the plantation house. Shadows lengthened. Birds chirped in their haste to return to their nests before dark. The tulips closed their blossoms at the same time the moon flowers opened up into broad white disks. Most of the food had been eaten but much more of it would go to waste.

Guests departed a few at a time, offering their congratulations and well wishes to Josette on their way out of the wrought-iron garden gate. The group of Navy men, and Lieutenant Nathan Forbes in particular, imitated courtly bows upon their exit. Josette graciously said her good-byes to each and every person, smoothly alternating between, "_Merci beaucoup_," and "Thank you."

The countess drew Josette inside as the mosquitoes started to flit about. Together, the ladies reclined in the parlor. The birthday girl reveled in the opening of her pirate's bounty of presents wrapped in colorful paper. From outside the open window, Angelique could hear Josette squeal with delight each time she opened a new hat or a new pair of gloves. She wildly cast aside the shreds of wrapping paper and tissue to the carpet. Someone else would pick up her mess later.

Angelique stayed on her feet in constant movement back and forth from the garden to the kitchen. She worked with the other servants to clear away the plates and wine glasses. She folded up the long swags of linen tablecloth and brought them to the laundry basin.

It was dark by the time she made her last strolling survey of the garden. She made sure that she had found the very last discarded wine glasses put carelessly by the bushes.

Barnabas sat alone in the dark, on the granite bench where Josette had spent her afternoon at the center of attention. It was the same garden but it had transformed into a different world by moonlight. The songbirds were asleep. All the scarlet had faded to gray, and yellow tulips seemed white. His velvet coat of deep maroon had turned to a charcoal shade.

"Monsieur Barnabas," she said, approaching him. "Why are you still here? Everyone else has gone."

"I'm sorry. I lost track of the time." Barnabas stood up.

Angelique blocked his exit with a sweet smile and a curtsey. "No, no, I'm sorry to disturb you. Surely you are enjoying this view of the garden by moonlight?"

"I suppose so." He sighed as his legs folded. He sank back down to sit on the granite bench.

Angelique, weary from being on her feet all day, settled down on the very edge of the bench with him. At arms' length away, she was nearer to him than she had been in hours.

"It was a lovely party, wasn't it, monsieur?"

"Yes."

All the mirth of spirit had drained out of him. It was more than weariness of the late hour. Angelique saw into the cloudiness of his soul the bleak loneliness of a ship lost at sea. She ached with sympathy for him. _This is what Josette does to men. She crushes their hearts under the heel of her silver shoe._

She said, "The garden is more beautiful by moonlight, is it not?"

"Perhaps."

"There is a full moon tonight, do you see? It is like a..." Angelique paused to think of a metaphor; Barnabas liked poetry. "...a pearl on black velvet."

He gazed upward. The thick foliage of the palm and acacia trees blocked off most of the sky. Feathery fronds and spiked leaves obscured the moon's large disk.

"But you can't see it very well from here," Angelique said. "Would you like to go on a walk with me? I'll show you a place where you can view the moon and the sky and all of the sea."

"Where?"

"Not far." She pointed over the wrought-iron garden gate. "Up that path to the little church on the hill."

He turned to her for the first time. "You must be tired. You've been on your feet working the party all day."

Angelique turned aside with a blush. _He noticed!_ "I am not so tired that I can't walk a mile with you."

"Very well, then, let's go." He stood up and offered a hand to her, like a gentleman to a lady. Angelique slipped her fingers into his warm grasp. The band of his signet ring felt cool.

#

Angelique led the way up the path of sugary white sand, through the waving fronds of whispering grasses, past the large trees with roots like an old man's fingers clutching at the ground. They came to a white picket fence. She glanced aside to the church graveyard where Josette's mother was buried. She felt rather than saw the restlessness of the lost spirits wandering among the headstones.

"I had no idea," Barnabas said, looking at the graveyard. "Such a bleak place exists in this paradise."

"What do you mean?"

"Graveyards are such dreary places. They unnerve me terribly, and I avoid them whenever possible."

"Are you afraid of ghosts, monsieur?"

He huffed something of a forced laugh. "No, of course not, there's no such thing as ghosts. What unnerves me is that, well, it's a vivid reminder of one's own mortality. I count myself fortunate that my parents and my little sister all thrive. I dread the day that I'll be required to attend a loved one's funeral. I almost wish that I'll die first before any of them."

"Oh don't say that!" Angelique cried. "Don't ever say that!"

"I'm sorry to frighten you. I apologize. I won't say another word about it. We've come to view the full moon, after all."

They reached the crest of the hill. The village church was a simple rectangular structure covered in sun-bleached stucco. It had a slanted roof of rain-weathered shingles and a steeple tower for a brass bell. Two shallow steps led up to the arched wooden door. The windows had only plain glass; they could not afford a cathedral's colors. The church was locked up at this hour, dark and empty, a shell without a soul. Off to the side was a stagnant pond, a wild tangle of rose bushes in full bloom. A life-sized statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary smiled sadly with her arms invitingly open. At the center of the statue's chest was displayed the _sacré-cœur_—a human heart encircled by roses and impaled by a sword.

Angelique stopped at the very edge of the slope's crest. Her toes risked sliding down the soft dry grasses all the way to the shore. The bay's gentle waters lapped at the silvery sands. The ships docked in the harbor seemed like toys from this height. Ocean waters stretched out like a wrinkled sheet of satin, all the way to the horizon, to be lost in the misty distance. A clear sky showed every star of the heavens. The moon's poxed texture showed stark and bright.

"Oh my," he exhaled, standing alongside her. "It's exquisite."

"It is the same moon that you see in Maine. Is it so different here?"

"Yes, oh yes, I can hardly describe it. Collinsport is often shrouded in fog and mist, so that sailors depend on the lighthouse at Seaview Point to save themselves from being dashed into the rocks. There are many nights when the clouds are so thick that you cannot see a single star. There are some nights when the darkness is so complete that a man can feel he has been struck blind, and even a lantern cannot spread its glow beyond the edge of the road... A few steps at a time, a man gropes his way home in the dark... through the woods where he has lived his entire life... a loaded flintlock in his hands... wary of the wolves and bears that lurk unseen in the shadows..."

Barnabas slapped at his own hand. "Damned mosquitoes!"

She startled from his sudden movement, breaking her out of the trance of his enchanting voice that had been painting a silvery-gray landscape in her mind.

He mistook her wide-eyed expression. "Forgive me for the expletive. It was very rude of me. I'm apologize."

"I forgive you. Go on, please. You were describing the woods around your home?"

Bloodthirsty mosquitoes twinkled in a light swarm around him. Their pale wings were illuminated by the shine of the full moon. Barnabas continued waving his hands about, fanning them off his sleeves and cheeks, but the insects persisted.

"We're being eaten alive! Perhaps we should go back."

She caught hold of his sleeve to prevent him from turning around. "No, wait! I know a remedy to ward them off."

"You do?"

Frantically, she looked about for something to fool him. Eucalyptus trees were too far away, near the graveyard. Rose bushes around the statue of the Virgin Mary were too ridiculous an idea. Nothing was available but the grass at her feet. Angelique bent over and pulled a handful of feathery stalks. She rubbed it between her palms until green juice oozed down her wrists.

"The scent of this grass repels them." She waved her hands in the air around him. As he watched her so closely, she had to turn aside so he would not see her lips move. She whispered in Creole a subtle invocation to the _loa_ of the night. She begged from them a small favor to send the hungry little eyes flying off somewhere else... just for a little while... just for tonight. The mosquito swarm blew away like dandelion seeds, and the air cleared.

"Imagine that, you were right!" Barnabas smiled broadly. "I shall have to remember that trick."

"I'm sorry, but it is only this grass, here, on this hill. I think because it is a churchyard and the Blessed Mother has compassion for us."

Barnabas looked back over his shoulder for a moment, to the statue, and then returned his skeptical grin to Angelique. "You'll forgive me, but I'm not sure I believe in God, Jesus, and Mary any more than I believe in ghosts."

"Monsieur!" she exclaimed with a rising thrill that left her breathless. He was the first white man she had ever known who doubted the Christian fantasy as much as she did.

"I've been reading the essays of Thomas Jefferson, and I just got my hands on _The Age of Reason_ by Thomas Paine. I've consumed the works of Descartes and Voltaire and the Greek philosophers, and... Oh, there is so much in my mind! So many new and exciting ideas. I feel like a barrel that's being filled to overflowing. I have no one with whom I can discuss such things. My father is certainly not interested in the Enlightenment, and my uncle Jeremiah... Well, he's a good-hearted man, but he doesn't enjoy thinking too deeply about too many things, much less discussing them."

Angelique rested her hand on his sleeve. "You may talk to me. I'm curious, who is this Voltaire?"

That small question was the last she spoke for the next several hours. Barnabas launched off into a deep and elaborate narration. He easily quoted long passages of text in French, and then compared and contrasted the viewpoints of Voltaire, Descartes, and Rousseau to the ancient philosophers Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato. He recited phrases in Greek—a strange sounding language to her ears—and restated them in English. Angelique hardly listened to much of the content, so carried away on the rushing current of his lyrical voice, a feeling of floating in deep water and drifting to wherever the waves might carry her.

Eventually, he settled down to recline on the dry soft grass. Still talking constantly, he leaned back against the slope. Angelique sat down in the grass with him. At first upright, and then as he continued to talk, she folded herself over and laid her head upon his coat's broad lapel. Together, they gazed up at the stars and the full moon that was now at its zenith overhead and on its way westward.

"I'm so fortunate to have the means to travel," he said, and she felt his voice resonate directly into her own body. "If I had stayed in Maine with my mother, I never would have collected my library of Greek classics. I never would have seen the pyramids of Egypt, or the fortified dams that restrain the seas from flooding Amsterdam, or heard Mozart's brilliant opera _Die Zauberflöte_ performed in Vienna. What a musical genius! What a tragedy that the world lost him so recently."

Angelique gazed up at the starry sky. His chest was her pillow. From his words she tried to imagine the wonders of those faraway places. His voice became the eyes for things she could not see for herself.

"I have also witnessed the despair of those pathetic souls in the slave markets on the Ivory Coast. A terrible thing, slavery."

"Mmmm," she agreed.

"I've argued with my father about whether our family's ships should traffic in that disgraceful cargo. He only cares about the profit! Oh yes, and there's plenty of profit to be made but at what cost to humanity? What a hypocrite my father can be, at times. He cherishes those words from the declaration of independence, 'all men are created equal,' and yet he does not put it into practice. Thankfully, our family does not own slaves outright. Yet, my father owns the contracts of indentured servants and treats them as less than men for no better reason than they were born to unfortunate circumstances. It's disgusting."

"Yes," she murmured, her eyes drooping and her mind growing heavy with the urge to sleep.

"I tell you, Angelique, I will never, _ever_ be a man who owns someone else body and soul. When my father passes on from this life, I'm going to set them all free—all of his indentured servants, every last one of them! I will refuse to deal with slave traders. Any man who does a day's labor for me will be fairly paid and treated with dignity. Yes, when I'm the master of Collinwood, that's how things will be!"

Angelique could no longer stay awake. Sleep overtook her mind. In the quiet darkness of slumber, she saw silly dreams of herself standing on the pyramids of Egypt and viewing the dry ocean of sand all around them.

She awoke suddenly when he sat up beneath her. By rising, he brought her upright with him. Barnabas gripped her shoulders. She blinked against the brightness of the sun—swollen to a large and glorious ball of flame dominating the edge of the sea. Swallows twittered loudly in the eaves of the church.

"Oh my god, it's the dawn!" he cried. "We've been out all night."

Still drowsy, she rested her head on his shoulder. "Yes we have."

"Are you not angry with me for keeping you out so late?"

"How could I ever be angry at you?" Angelique tilted her head against his shoulder and smiled sweetly into his face. So close, she could feel the warmth of his breath. By the way he stared down at her mouth, she knew that he desired to kiss her. She held very still, making herself available. This was it: the moment when he realized that they were meant to be lovers.

Barnabas pushed her off and scrambled to get to his feet. "You should walk back to the house alone and say nothing of having been with me. I'll, uh, go down to the harbor and find Lieutenant Forbes at a tavern. He shouldn't be hard to catch at this hour. I'll ask him to say that I was out all night... uh, drinking with him. In a few hours, I'll come to visit Josette."

_Josette, always Josette! Why can't he forget about her? _Angelique slowly rose to stand before him. "Are you ashamed to be with me?"

"No, no, of course not! I'm thinking of your reputation. You don't want a scandal, do you?"

"I am only a servant. No one cares what I do."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true. You are as ladylike as any lady I've ever known." As a gesture of sympathy, he dipped into a courtly bow.

Angelique offered her hand as she had so often seen Josette do to gentlemen. He responded out of habit and lifted the back of her hand to meet his warm face. She allowed her hand to linger there. She raised her arm a bit to press into his soft lips. And he, with his mouth still connected to her knuckles, opened his eyes wide and looked up at her darkly. A shudder went through her, tingling into her very core.

Finally, he released with a little pip. "Good night... that is, good morning. _A bientot_."

#


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The master decided that Josette should have a parlor of her own. He planned to install a harpsichord that he was ordering from Vienna, and full-length mirrors on the wall that he was ordering from Holland, and the finest carpets to be ordered from Morocco. It was planned that Josette would spend her hours practicing Mozart and Bach and learning to dance the minuet. With a parlor for her exclusive use, she would gain the necessary skills of a lady to attract the right sort of gentleman.

So he charged Angelique with a task. "Pack up everything in my study. Put it all in crates. Have it stored in the attic. Only keep what's in my desk drawers, but everything else... I want it all gone by Friday. Do you understand?"

"Yes, monsieur, I understand." Angelique entered the master's study and halted. The clutter assaulted her eyes and the enormous scale of the task fully hit her consciousness. The study had floor to ceiling bookshelves built into the walls. Every shelf was crammed with loose leaf papers, leather portfolios, rolled up scrolls and parchments, cigar boxes, and dusty published books. More papers lay heaped on the floor, in mounds knee-deep from end of the room to the other.

"See that it's done by Friday!" Andre duPres swaggered off and was gone.

Jean-Baptiste the butler carried in an empty crate. "Do you need a hand, child?"

Angelique smiled her thanks to him. "No, thank you, I'll be fine. Can you bring more crates?"

"More? This here is goin' to take you a while."

"Oh, a couple of hours at most. I work quickly!"

The butler winked at her. "But there's no reason to work quickly, child. You got till Friday, dontcha? Till then, why be in a hurry to do what Master wants?"

Angelique laughed softly. _Why does the master deserve to have anything he wants_. "I see what you mean. All right, then, I'll do as much as I can with this crate today."

"There's my little angel." He slouched off towards the door. "See you at supper."

When he had gone, she checked the latch of the connecting door to be sure it was closed. Then she strolled to the window, stepping over heaps and piles of papers on the way. She made sure the curtains were drawn. Assured of her privacy, she took a stand in the middle of the room. Slowly she drew in a deep breath and savored the scent of old stale paper like fallen leaves. Her awareness of the mundane details blurred. She had a sensation like going underwater. The ambient sunlight shining through the linen curtains gave a ghostly sheen to the pale papers. She looked deeper in search of the slumbering _loa_ who had once been the trees from which the papers were made.

"Hear me, old ones," she said in Creole, the language that the native trees would understand. "Hear my voice and rise from your sleep. Hear me and obey. Rise... Rise from where you are. Rise and fly at my command. Fly into this box!"

A wave of her hand, and the papers exploded off the floor as if blown by a great wind. They fluttered and twirled in the air. A cyclone of loose sheets and hard-bounded ledgers flapped loudly. Her hands worked in the air like a puppet master. Her concentrated will guided them into swirling an arc. Books and papers shoveled themselves into the crate and stacked neatly up to the rim.

"Ah," she sighed at the job well done. Now she had time to go and find Barnabas at whatever he was doing. She would ask him more questions about the Greek philosophers and get him talking again. She would make him a pot of coffee—black with a half spoonful of sugar, just the way he liked it—and happily would listen to him lecture for the rest of the afternoon.

One of the leather-bound ledger books jumped out of the crate on its own. Angelique pointed at it like scolding a naughty child. "What are you doing? You! Get back in there with the rest of them!"

Chilly winds rushed through the room, like nothing she had ever felt before. Her breath came as a puff of vapor.

Angelique whirled in place, looking frantically to the ceiling, to the door, and to the window. "Who is it? Who's there?!"

The pages of the ledger flipped open, fluttering the way the countess duPres shuffled her deck of Tarot cards. Then it stopped and lay flat. The room became warm once more.

"So you want me to see this?" she said with a trembling voice. "All right, I'll look."

The page dated nineteen years ago was a bill of sale for a slave woman. A red smear splotched the lower left hand corner. Angelique sank to her knees and touched the wine stain. She sensed in the texture of the paper that Andre duPres had spilled it in a drunken stupor, blubbering tears of anguish over a secret. The slave's name was Sophie and she had been sixteen years old at the time Andre sold her away to a gentleman in Virginia with a tobacco plantation. The notations on the receipt were in English, and Andre's pinched handwriting was difficult to read. But Angelique squinted and gradually the inky scratches made sense: _octoroon with green eyes, can pass for white... nubile and fertile... has already born one child,__ a girl._

Tucked behind the bill of sale page was another folded paper. Angelique drew it out, and with her heart pounding, she opened the folds of a finely crafted parchment. It was a simple baptismal certificate bearing the name Angelique and the date of her birth. Andre duPres had always said that the nuns of the orphanage had told him her birth date, and until now, she had never doubted his story. Yet here it was—clear evidence that he had planned to baptize her. The certificate was not signed by a priest, and the christening date was a blank line. Angelique's hands began to shake. Her eyes blurred with tears. _The nuns of the orphanage would have baptized me, if I came from the orphanage at all._

"Ah!" she cried as the full weight of the realization slammed into her. _I am the daughter of Andre duPres and his slave! I am Josette's half sister! _The master had almost wanted to do the right thing for her soul, by having her baptized, but he was too much of a coward to carry his own bastard child into a church and stand before God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all the angels and saints. So he sold off her mother and kept her as a playmate for his daughter. _You speak of gentlemanly honor and courtly etiquette, monsieur, and yet you do this? Weren't you also marri__ed, at the time, to Josette's mother when you forced your desires onto your slave? You took what you wanted and then you discarded her when she became an embarrassment?_

Angelique folded up the certificate and tucked it back in the page. She slammed the ledger shut. She picked it, hugging it to her chest. Leaving behind her chore half done, she dashed out of the door. She hurried down the corridor, faster and faster, turning the corners with more reckless speed. She navigated the maze of connecting rooms and shortcut passages on her way to the rear of the house, impatient to reach the servants' rooms that adjoined the pantry and the kitchen.

Tears started dribbling out of her eyes; she could not make them stop. For the first time in many years, she wept openly, blindly, in soft choking sobs that burned the back of her throat. _I'll never let this happen to me! No man will ever treat me so cruelly, or if he does, it will be his last act of life on this earth!_

"Angelique, is that you?" Barnabas called from the open door to the library.

She ducked her head and dashed past. At the far end of the straight corridor, the glass-paned double doors beckoned with sunlight. "I'm... so-sorry, monsieur, but I... I have to... to..."

"You're upset." His horse boots clumped on the floor boards just behind.

"No," she whimpered. She put a hand over her face to hide, even as her other arm still clutched the ledger to her thin chest. _He can't see me this way! Not now!_

"What's happened? What's wrong?" He chased after her, strong and swift. He caught her just as she reached the double doors.

"Nothing!" She pushed through to the outside air. This was the side of the house where the pathway of sand made a course from the wagon road at the front to the pantry, storerooms, and servants' quarters in the back. No one was here at this time of day. Lunch had been served, and supper was not yet being prepared.

Angelique hurried along the sandy path, dodging around the large earthenware pots that sprouted a variety of savory herbs. Barnabas stayed with her in earnest pursuit.

"Obviously something is terribly wrong. Why won't you let me help you? Tell me what's happened."

"Nothing has happened!" Angelique panted heavily by the time she reached the servants' quarters.

The stucco was painted coral pink and the wooden door was colored robin's egg blue, giving the illusion of a happy country village in the south of France. Until now, she had felt at home here in this austere one-story cottage, where she used to share a room with her nursemaid Veronique, and where she found refuge from the Countess duPres's demands. No one was here at this time of day, either. She had sought out privacy and she knew—with the awareness of a predator—that all of the rooms were empty.

"I don't believe you." Barnabas put his hand to the door frame and blocked her from going inside. "Is it something to do with that book you're holding?"

"This?" Angelique clutched the ledger even closer to her chest. "No, this... This is nothing."

"Is it?"

She looked at him. The sunshine glared behind him and made his face a mask of darkness. He was a shelter from the burning glare; she was safe in his shadow. _I can't lie to him; he's too clever. I don't want to lie to him, but I can't bear to tell him the whole truth._

"Well, the master told me to pack up his study and I found a paper that shows I was never baptized."

"I see."

Angelique blinked to clear her eyes of tears. "Yes, you understand why I'm upset?"

"Yes I do, but then..." He put a hand to her cheek and gently wiped away the dribbling tears. "You know that I don't think any less of you because of it. Remember what I told you of my readings in philosophy? I don't care one whit for this heaven and hell nonsense. _Cogito ergo sum_, or _je pense donc je suis_, as Descartes said over a hundred years ago. It is our rational mind and conscious will that validates our existence, not the fantasy of some bearded old man on a cloud."

Angelique raised herself to her tiptoes and chomped a hard kiss into his mouth. Barnabas inhaled surprise but did not pull away. His arms whipped around her, clamping on, squeezing her so tightly that she could hardly breathe. She did not want to breathe, smothered in his warm soft lips; she did not ever want to come up for air again.

His left hand fumbled for the door knob and clumsily managed to get it open. Together they staggered inside. The kiss had to break but he never let her go. He clutched at her like a drowning man, caressing her cheeks and shoulders. He gnawed hot wet kisses into her neck at the same time he reached around for the buttons at the back of her gown. The ledger thudded to the floor. Angelique's knees weakened, sagging into a sort of half curtsey, adrift at sea and clinging to the power of him.

All his politeness and refinement vanished, replaced with a hungry beast that devoured her. Barnabas tackled her onto the narrow cot, sprawling her sideways, and he climbed on top of her. His hands worked quickly, skillfully, to peel away her gown's bodice so he could fondle and kiss her naked breasts. Angelique gasped and groaned at the fiery chills coursing through her. Helplessly pinned under his weight, ecstatic in the surrender, she clutched onto the rickety bed frame and held on for her life. He raised her layers of skirts and crushed himself into her.

Angelique closed her eyes and succumbed to the total darkness. She lost all awareness of the spirits of air and sky; she no longer remembered the _loa_ in the trees and ghosts wandering unseen in the graveyard; she gave no thought to the mystic eyes in between the flames. All that mattered was this man and herself, his body joined to hers, kneading and pounding her into a collapse of exhaustion.

She drifted afterwards into a dreamless doze. A tepid fever clouded her mind. Weariness drained her limbs of all strength or will to move. Yet her blood rushed swiftly tingling with new life. Her skin felt brittle like a snake's skin sloughing off and about to be shed.

A little while later, she awakened. Barnabas sat up on the edge of the cot. His back to her, he was busy at fixing his buttons.

"Are you leaving me, _mon cher_?" She raised her left arm, reaching over herself to stroke the back pleats of his satiny vest.

"I'm sorry."

"If you're sorry, then stay."

"I can't." Barnabas stood up. His indigo cravat hung in two long bands at either side of his starched collar. "I'm supposed to be at the docks to meet my father's ship! He'll be furious if I'm late."

"He will understand if you tell him you're in love."

"Love," he repeated, making a sour face. Barnabas quickly looped the cravat several times around his stiff high collar. He tied up the thick bow under his chin. "My father doesn't understand 'love'. Of that you can be sure."

Angelique sat upright. She reached out to touch the front of his waistcoat. Her palms caressed against the firm strong chest that had just pressed the very breath out of her.

"You do love me, don't you, Barnabas?"

He smiled down at her with such tenderness as it made her blood melt. "If I were a man inclined to believe in Heaven, then it is you—my dear angel—who has shown me to paradise." Then he bowed over from the waist and kissed her full on the mouth, long and deep and lingering. Angelique swayed underneath him, wondering if they might tumble backwards and start all over again. But he pulled away.

She clung to the bedpost as she watched him hurry for the door. "Return to me soon, my darling."

"Every minute that I am not in your arms will be a torture." Barnabas tugged straight the lapels of his tailcoat.

He opened the door, checked left and right that no one was outside, and then launched into the sunshine. After he had gone, the room was so empty without him.

Angelique felt thirsty and went to the wash basin atop her unvarnished bureau. She poured a cup of tepid water out of her stoneware pitcher. Between her legs it ached. Speckles of blood stained her white sheets. And she smiled.

#

Within the hour, Angelique had changed her gown, combed her hair, and was back on duty at the plantation house. She pretended to make herself busy with a dust rag wiping the tabletop statues in the foyer. Gradually she inched her way closer and closer to the half-open sliding door that separated the foyer from the parlor.

Joshua Collins's haughty, nasal voice carried poorly as he tended to mumble. Angelique only caught fragments of his monologue, but it was enough to gather that his only son had disappointed him in almost every way. "...delay in unloading and loading of cargo... inefficient scheduling around predictable weather patterns... fraternizing with Navy men... time you settled down... come back to Collinsport... daughters of several prominent families in Boston..."

"I'm not interested in being matched to ladies from Boston," Barnabas said clearly. "Or from New York, or Philadelphia, for that matter. When I marry, it will be someone of my own choice, someone I love!"

"Love! Bah!" his father snorted. "If I had waited to fall in love, I never would have married your mother, and where would you be?"

Angelique crept closer to put her ear by the crack in the door. She held the dust rag limp at her side.

Andre duPres said, "Forgive me for interrupting, gentlemen, but we were talking about the shipping schedule? We only have two months left before the Atlantic storm season."

"Yes, thank you," said Joshua Collins. "At least someone in this room has a rational head."

"Father, really, must you! I have as much a rational head as any man."

"Oh do you?" Papers rustled. A chair creaked. "Tell me, son, what is the current market price for a barrel of molasses? Don't know? Well, then tell me the volume of the cargo hold on our flagship? Don't know that either?"

Barnabas said, "Why should I memorize such trivial details? That's why we keep ledgers and logbooks, isn't it?"

Fabric rustled in the corridor behind her as someone approached. Angelique hurried to resume the pretense of dusting the narrow tables in the hallway. Busy with wiping over and over a spot that was already clean, she did not look up to see who strolled behind her. She did not need to look; by the scent of jasmine perfume and the rhythm of those clicking silver shoes, she knew.

"Is papa in the parlor?" Josette asked.

"Oui, mademoiselle. He is discussing business with Monsieur Collins and Barnabas."

"Business? Only business?" Josette leaned closer to the crack in the door.

Angelique whispered, "Mademoiselle, it is not polite to eavesdrop!"

Pouting frustration, Josette turned away from the door. "I had dared to hope... Angelique, do you think I'm being foolish?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Josette held up a pair of folded letters: one on coarse parchment, and the other on hand-pressed paper infused with lavender leaves. "I have received two proposals of intentions, and I don't know what to do! One is from Monsieur Bellefleur from Trinidad who is planning to relocate to Quebec, and the other is from Monsieur Monteau of Jamaica whose father is a slave trader. They are both handsome and worthy gentlemen, but I do not love either one of them. I don't wish to move to Quebec, and I am loathe to marry into a family who traffics in that disgraceful cargo."

Angelique inclined her head at that last choice of words, disgraceful cargo; it was exactly how Barnabas had described the slave traders.

"I don't understand your dilemma," Angelique said. "If you do not wish to marry either one of them..."

"But I must marry someone!" Josette stomped her little foot. Her large brown eyes glistened with moisture. She looked about ready to cry. "I'm almost twenty years old and if I'm not engaged soon, I might wind up an old spinster like my Aunt Natalie!"

"I'm sure that's not going to happen." Angelique caressed her arm soothingly. "If you're patient, the right man will come along."

"When he does..." Josette looked aside in the pause. "Do you think he will want me as much as I want him?"

"Any man would be a fool not to want you." Angelique patted her forearm, stirring the layers of the mademoiselle's frilly cuff. "Now, why don't you go into the garden with your rosary and start saying a novena? Ask the Blessed Virgin to send you the right husband, and I'm certain she will hear your prayers."

"Yes, yes!" Josette's face brightened with her smile. "I'll use my very special rosary with the pearl beads and the silver crucifix."

"That's an excellent idea." Angelique holding her arm turned about, in a sort of slow-paced gavotte step, and maneuvered Josette in the direction of the staircase. "If you hurry, you can finish one recitation of the rosary before supper is served."

"Yes, I will." Josette hoisted her long skirt and charged up the stairs. Angelique smiled to watch her running after such foolishness. If the coquette's mind was occupied with prayers, she would not be thinking of Barnabas. _Put him out of your mind and look elsewhere, Josette; he belongs to me, now._

#

Countess duPres refused to share a supper table with Joshua Collins, calling him a rude and insufferable snob. Excusing herself with a vague complaint of womanly weakness, she demanded that a tray be carried up to her bedroom. Angelique brought up a silver tray weighted down with shrimp scampi sauteed in butter, whitefish in a mustard sauce, tomato cream soup with a garnish of mint leaf, a mixed fruit salad, and a crouton of bread still warm from the oven. Her own stomach gurgled; she had not eaten supper yet.

As night fell and darkened the windows, Angelique thought of him. Perhaps he would visit her room again in the cover of darkness. He had promised to return! He had said that each minute apart would feel like torture, and she felt the same way. Bearing the heavy tray full of food for the countess, her arms ached to be holding him again. Strange, new sensations tingled in deep places that she did not know existed. It was like performing her first magic spell, all over again—that sense of wonderment and curiosity, the thrill of power being tested.

"I hope he's not staying long," the countess said as Angelique entered the room. "That insufferable man, Joshua Collins! If I have to complain of a headache every night until he leaves, I will."

"Yes my lady." Angelique set the tray on the little table by the fireside. She checked the arrangement of the spoons and forks on the folded napkin.

Countess duPres had made a throne of the window seat. Her grand skirts spread around her in a half circle. Her glorious auburn curls piled high on top of her head. Coils of curls—now sagging by the end of the day—draped on one shoulder. She had her deck of Tarot cards and was turning them over on the window sill, one by one.

"Tell me, Angelique, is Josette having her supper in the dining room with the Collinses?"

"Yes, she is." She politely clasped her hands in front of herself. "Will that be all, my lady?"

"Stay with me." The countess turned over another card, and then another. "Something very... very important is going to happen tonight."

Angelique blushed, thinking of Barnabas, and turned her head aside. "Do the cards say so?"

"Yes... yes, they do. See here are The Lovers which may signify an existing relationship or one that is about to exist. And here is The Chariot which signifies a struggle of some sort against formidable obstacles."

Curious, she strolled across the room to observe the cards. Before now, she had never taken much interest in them. Clearly the cards had no power of their own, no _loa_ sparkled in those flat paper wafers, no spirits lurked on Natalie duPres's shoulders to shuffle the order. All the pictures were the same, time and again—not mercurial and variable like the seas and the winds and the tides. The only thing that changed was the reader's interpretation, and the definitions so broad that any reasonable guess had a chance of coming true.

"What sort of obstacles, my lady?"

The next card was a picture of two dogs howling at the full moon. "I can't be sure. The path is one of darkness, of night and wild nature. It is the moon that lights our way through the realm of the unknown."

"I see."

Countess duPres looked up at her. "You don't believe in the Tarot."

"I am not sure if I believe or if I don't." Angelique bowed her head demurely. "But it is interesting. Can you tell by the cards who the lovers are?"

"No, but I think it's obvious."

"Oh?" Angelique turned away to hide her blush. She pretended to make herself busy at the canopy bed with fluffing the countess's sheets and arranging the mosquito net.

The countess put away her Tarot cards on the window sill, in the same place where she had lost them before. She rose in a loud swish of taffeta and satin. The grand lady made a graceful glide across the room to the little table by the fireplace. Only when she was properly seated, with a napkin on her lap and a silver fork in her left hand, did she continue the conversation.

"Josette and Barnabas, of course."

"Oh?" Angelique punched the pillow.

"Surely she has told you that she's utterly enamored of him." The countess took a bite of shrimp and frowned her disapproval. "The Gascon has overcooked them again."

"Josette... is interested... in Barnabas?" Angelique had to choke it out, repeating the words so she could be sure if she had heard correctly.

"Very much so."

"Then why was she flirting with all those other young men at the birthday party?"

Countess duPres laughed in between sips of her creamy tomato soup. "Love for persons of your station must be such a simple task. You see someone you like, you propose, and you marry—just like that. Ladies such as Josette, and myself, are obligated to follow a more complicated etiquette. A proper lady does not simply throw herself at a man. She must test his sincerity by appearing to court his rivals. She must entice him with her charms, but not directly. When he finally comes to her, she must at first reject him—but not too vehemently. Only in this courtly dance will a lady learn of his true intentions, for if a gentleman is determined to pursue her through all obstacles, then his love will be everlasting."

"It sounds cruel." Angelique glanced aside to the flames waving in the fireplace. Gaps in the orange shadows had small eyes looking back at her. The whispers were silent, but she had the sense that somewhere the spirits were laughing.

"On the contrary, it would be cruel to marry someone out of convenience that one did not fight to win. Such passionless marriages are their own special hell." The countess picked at the whitefish fillet with her fork.

Angelique looked to the door. Her eyes widened, frantic to know what was happening in the dining room at this moment. Yet she could not invoke the eyes of the flames to see beyond the reach of her mortal sight, not with the countess demanding her presence.

"May I be excused, my lady? I haven't had supper myself."

The countess offered her plate of shrimp in butter sauce. "You can eat these. I don't want them."

"I would rather eat downstairs, if it pleases you, my lady."

The countess shrugged. She ripped open the crouton and dipped the crust in her soup. "As you'd like, though I can't imagine that a bowl of stew made of kitchen scraps would be preferable."

"I have, uh, simple tastes." Angelique dipped her knees in a curtsy. "I shall return in about an hour to fetch your tray."

#

Scrambling to the downstairs, she rushed to the closed door of the dining room. She put her ear to the narrow gap between the panels. As if choreographed by the trickster spirits, her timing was perfect.

In the dining room, Josette in her rich, jovial voice proclaimed, "Papa, I have received two letters today, from Monsieur Bellefleur and from Monsieur Monteau, who are both expressing interest in socializing with me further. Do I have your permission to invite them over for tea?"

"Not at the same time, surely," Andre duPres remarked.

Josette just giggled. "Perhaps or perhaps not. I haven't decided. Barnabas, what do you think?"

"About what?"

"Monsieur Bellefleur and Monsieur Monteau."

"I'm not interested in either one of them," he said.

"Of course not," Josette said merrily. "I meant, which one should I invite to tea first?"

A chair loudly squeaked on the wooden floor. Barnabas said, "I need some air. The wine... the wine is quite going to my head."

Joshua Collins exclaimed, "You're still on your first glass!"

"Yes, well, it's... it's... Excuse me."

As his footsteps approached the door, Angelique whirled about and dashed into a connecting corridor. She held still, out of his sight, as he emerged from the dining room

He passed by on his way to the garden. She allowed him to go first and waited by counting to twenty, so as not to appear too obvious. It was torture to walk his trail at a slow unhurried pace, to hold herself back from running to his side. She had to be careful for his sake as well as hers. Before turning a corner, she checked that no other servant was coming from that way. She passed the open door to the kitchen only after peeking around the door frame to be sure that everyone was busy at the fireplace.

She opened only one of the double doors and just enough to slip her slender body through. This night in July was humid and warmer than most, as warm as the daytime, and the only difference being the absence of light. Shadows consumed the moon down to a crescent sliver. The cicada bugs loudly sang their mating song from the trees, a desperate chant of insect voices, _mem-mem-mem-weee_, that almost sounded human.

Barnabas stood at the fountain. He dipped his kerchief into the dribbling waters and then dabbed the back of his neck.

She approached from the side, admiring the darkness of him. The black coat and black trousers blended with his smoothly combed hair. The outlines of his body blurred into the shadows all around. He was lost—as lost as she had ever seen anyone—and she feared that if she did not reach out to him at this moment, his human face would dissolve and he would become a ghostly spirit haunting the trees.

He noticed her and revolved to face in her direction. She held forth her hand. Without a word, he took hold of her fingers.

Together they walked the garden path around the side of the great plantation house. They avoided the golden pools of candlelight glowing out of the windows. They slipped quietly through the shadows and came to the door of her servants' quarters. By night, the cheery colors had faded to dark gray and darker gray. On this very spot, that afternoon, she had first kissed him; the memory of it raised a rush of thrill that heated her blood. Her hands trembled as she turned the knob.

As soon as they were safely alone, Barnabas swooped in to embrace her. This time, his kisses were long and deep. They stood for a while clasped in each others' arms, savoring the taste of each others' mouths. He undressed her slowly, picking out the buttons one at a time. Her gown toppled off her shoulders. She stood nude before him like the statue of the nymph at the garden fountain. His hands stroked down the curve of her back, and she sighed a long moan.

Angelique fumbled with the knot of his cravat. She desperately wanted to loosen his collar and kiss his neck. She remembered his skin was soft, not like what she had expected a man's skin to be. But the satin was looped over and tied too tightly. "I can't..."

"Let me." His strong thumbs pried open the knotted bow under his chin. In a few quick tugs, he got it loose.

She clamped her mouth onto the side of his throat and slurped and sucked at his salty skin. In response, his breaths became shallow and quick. His fingertips dug into the hollows of her shoulder blades, and he squeezed her tighter. They swayed in place, dizzy, the floor reeling like the deck of a boat. Somehow he managed to wriggle one-handed out of his tailcoat. Deftly, he plucked open the long chain of buttons running down the front of his vest.

Angelique stepped backwards, her arms outstretched in beckoning him to the bed. He yanked off his shirt overhead and tossed it like a rag to the floor. He dropped his trousers on the way, and in two quick steps, he fell into her. They landed together on the bed frame. The wood creaked as if to split in half. Again he slammed himself into her, fierce and desperate and hungry, and this time it did not hurt at all. She squinted her eyes shut to be swept away in a whirlpool, to drown in the spiraling current that dragged her under the sea, then raised her up on the force of a wave, and smashed her against the rocks of the shore.

#


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Six days passed in a sleepwalking delirium of Angelique going about her mundane chores in a passionless daze. She answered when spoken to, "Oui mademoiselle," and "Oui monsieur," and "Oui Madame Countess," but did not initiate conversation herself.

She politely served oolong tea and butter cookies to each of Josette's gentleman suitors, who alternately came to the house each day. Gilbert Louis Bellefleur—the one bound for Quebec—seemed very sure of himself and on the second visit dared to kiss Josette full on the mouth. She pushed him off but he only laughed with the callous lustiness of a Navy man, and Angelique pouring tea pretended not to observe. Maurice Rene Monteau—the slave trader's son—was a nervous fellow who had very little to say. He carried a silver snuff box and never put it away. Every so often, while Josette prattled on about flowers and fashion, Monsieur Monteau snorted a pinch of snuff powder. Whenever he sneezed into his kerchief, Josette politely turned aside.

One evening, Josette complained to her aunt in the privacy of her bedroom. She was seated at her dressing table, as usual, looking at herself in the gilded oval mirror. "I can't bear the thought of either one of them as a husband. What should I do, Aunt Natalie?"

Angelique fussed with arranging the sheets and blankets in bed where Josette would sleep alone. _Poor Josette_, she thought, biting down on a prideful grin. _She will sleep alone tonight, a po__rcelain doll stored in its box_. As darkness approached, she became restless, hurrying through the last of her daily chores. Slapping and fluffing the pillow, she thought of her own pillow where she would soon thrash about in ecstasy shared with her beloved.

"Be patient," said the countess, strolling about the room in her long brocade dressing robe. "You are winning the game. I have been observing him closely, and I see a change in him. Barnabas is distracted and moody. He starts a sentence and does not finish it. He stares off at the window."

"What does all that mean?" Josette opened her crystal perfume bottle, releasing the strong scent of jasmine.

"It means, my dear..." Countess duPres glided up behind her at the dressing table. She put her hands on Josette's shoulders. "Barnabas is clearly in love."

Angelique turned aside to conceal her smile. _Yes he is, with me._

"Then why doesn't he say something? Why doesn't he do something?" Josette forcefully put the perfume bottle back on the table. The other perfumes and tins of face powder rattled.

"He will," the countess assured her. "He will! You are driving him mad with jealousy, and soon he will break."

Angelique coughed into her hand to stifle the wild laughter that threatened to erupt out of her. _What ridicul__ous advice! You take your strategy in romance from a fifty year old spinster, and you wonder why you fail? Barnabas comes to me because I am honest about what it is in my heart. He trusts me. He is safe with me._

Night darkened the windows. Her blood came alive with warmth. Angelique bowed a curtsey. "Will that be all?"

"Yes, Angelique, you may go."

#

Six nights in a row, he visited her room after dark. Like a cicada, he molted out of his shell of gentlemanly clothes. In his true form, he devoured her whole. This was reality—not the polite restraint of the daytime. Unclothed, naked limbs entwined, touching everywhere, kissing everywhere, rolling around like porpoises at play, they took turns on top and underneath each other.

On the seventh night, in an early hour between midnight and dawn, they rested in each others' arms. Angelique cuddled with him. Knitted into his limbs, she had to recline sideways and be latched onto him so she would not topple off the bed's narrow frame. By the faint moonlight, she observed him sleeping.

His closed eyes fluttered in a dream. He frowned in his sleep. Fitfully, he mumbled, "No, no, no."

"What do you see, my darling?" She stroked his forehead and tasted his dream, feeling the sound of it like a cello quartet playing in another room. The string instruments in his mind were melancholy in a minor key. Through a murky curtain of his skull, she viewed the scene that he suffered in his sleep.

_A granite structure as small as a fisherman's hut._

_Four steps lead up to a wrought-iron door. A latch lock on the left._

_An empty crypt. At the far wall a lion's head with a ring in its mouth._

_Beyond the bricks of the wall, a secret chamber._

_A coffin wrapped in chains._

_Inside the coffin, a loudly beating heart._

Barnabas woke up startled. He thrashed to the side. She could not hold on; she toppled off, bringing the sweat-drenched sheet with her when she thudded naked to the floor.

"I'm sorry!" He sat up to look at her. "Are you hurt?"

"No." Angelique laughed softly as she climbed back onto the cot's frame to be with him. "It is not so far to fall."

He lay back to the pillow. She rested her cheek on his smooth bare chest. His heartbeat was deep like a kettle drum and sounded the same as the pulse in the dream.

"I had a nightmare," he said quietly.

"Oh?"

"It was terrible."

"What did you see?"

Barnabas drew a deep slow breath, held it, and exhaled a long sigh like an ocean wave drawing back from the sand. "I was in the mausoleum at the Eagle Hill cemetery, buried alive in a coffin wrapped in chains. Why would I dream of such a horrible thing? Is it a premonition of some doom that will befall me?"

"Do you often have premonitions of the future?" she asked, even though she knew the answer.

"No, never."

She raised herself up and slithered on top of him, spreading her thighs to straddle him. She curled forward to kiss his chest that was moist in the warmth of the night. She felt his heartbeat throb beneath her lips. "Don't be afraid," she murmured. "It was just a silly dream. You're safe here in the night, in the dark, with me."

#

On the eighth day, a carriage arrived with his uncle Jeremiah Collins traveling alone. He brought a satchel full of signed contracts that he delivered to Andre duPres. The two men had their meeting in the new study at the back of the house, where the servants had recently moved his desk. The papers of the old study were packed away in crates in the attic. Jeremiah also brought a bottle of sherry imported from Spain, and the two men toasted the success of their business ventures.

Angelique lingered at the tail of Barnabas's shadow as he strolled the long corridor. Sunlight beamed in from the windows. The waxed floorboards reflected the glare like mirrored glass. His lone silhouette made a core of darkness that consumed all brightness into itself. He was not aware of her presence; not aware that she watched him from behind; not aware that she thrilled to the strength and grace of his casual movement. She counted the hours until nightfall when he would come to her room again.

Barnabas knocked twice on the study door, then without waiting for a response, he entered the drawing room. "Uncle Jeremiah, welcome back."

"It's good to be back. How are you, Barnabas?"

"Fine thank you. Mister duPres, would you mind very much if my uncle and I have a conversation?"

"Of course not." Andre duPres rustled some papers. His heavy boots lumbered to the door. Angelique ducked out of sight and waited for him to pass by.

"I received Father's letter from Bermuda yesterday, telling me that your orders are to bring me back to Collinwood. Must I go?"

Jeremiah answered, "Is there some reason you don't want to go home?"

"Well... that is..." Barnabas's voice grew fainter as he moved off to the window. Angelique crept closer to the half open door and listened at the crack.

"It's about a woman, isn't it?"

"Yes! How did you know?"

Jeremiah chuckled with fondness and pity for his nephew. "At your age, what else could it be? You're thin and pale. You look as if you haven't slept in a week."

"I've been trying to make a decision," Barnabas said wearily. "It hasn't been easy."

"Would you like to talk about it?"

"I'm not sure." In the pause, Angelique heard him pace the room. The heavy steady cadence of his footsteps was a rhythm as familiar as the beating of her own heart. "I need more time!"

"You don't have time," Jeremiah told him. "In a few weeks, the Atlantic storms will hit. Joshua wants you to return to Collinwood, now, and supervise the last stages of construction of two more brigs. Next year in the spring, we're going to sail to Canton."

"China!" Barnabas exclaimed.

"I'm sorry, but surely you didn't imagine that you could spend the rest of your life here? The contracts are signed. The shipping schedule is plotted out for the next two years. Frankly, there's no practical reason for you to stay in Martinique."

Dizziness rocked her. Angelique clutched the door frame to keep from fainting. _Barnabas leaving!_

"When do we ship out?"

"Tomorrow morning," Jeremiah replied.

"So soon?"

"I'm sorry, but Joshua's waiting for us in Bermuda." A clink of crystal was the sound of Jeremiah putting his sherry glass back on the silver-plated tray.

"Then there's something I must do. Excuse me."

Angelique dashed away from the doorway. She ducked into a nearby linen closet and stood there, quietly hidden among shelves of bedsheets and blankets. She waited listening for his bootfalls to fade away. Only when she was sure, did she emerge into the sunlight. She stared down the long straight empty corridor at her own shadow casting a long pole on the floor. _Where have you gone, my darling? What are you planning to do?_

#

Angelique went to the kitchen on the pretense of helping to prepare supper, but what she really wanted was access to the blazing fire. The logs sprouted flames as tall as flower stalks, bright orange and crackling with heat. It was still a bright afternoon, and July made the weather a bit warmer than usual, so it would have looked suspicious for her to build a fire in her own room.

Other servants worked around and behind her. They chopped vegetables at the cutting block. They scraped and gutted fish. They skewered shrimp. She stood at the hearth fire and stirred the soft custard with a wooden spoon in backwards figure eights, around and around.

Quietly she whispered to the orange shadows between the flames, "Eyes of fire. Eyes of light. Show me what I cannot see."

Her awareness blurred and swirled on the smoke, becoming smoke, and drifted away on the warm afternoon breeze. Her sights floated through the corridors of the house, out the back doors that shined with sunlight, to the garden alive with colors.

Barnabas and Josette strolled together beneath the flickering shadows of the acacia tree. In his green tailcoat, he matched the color of the leaves. Her pale ivory gown was like the gown of a Grecian nymph. Arm in arm, they strolled around the fountain. He gazed constantly at her, but Josette turned her head avoiding his stare.

They stopped by a sprawling tangle of oleanders and geraniums. Barnabas dropped to his knees. He kissed the tips of her fingers.

Josette bowed over him. She rested her hand on his shoulder, her arm stretched straight like the blade of a sword held by Queen Guinevere bestowing knighthood on her faithful Lancelot.

Barnabas looked up to her. The smile that broadened his face was full of more joy than Angelique had ever seen on him, or on anyone. He rose to his feet, encircled Josette with his arms, and drew her into a long deep gentle kiss.

"No!" Angelique cried out.

The Gascon chef trotted to the fireside to see what was wrong. He took the wooden spoon from Angelique's trembling hand. "Oh, you've burned the custard. What a waste! It's completely ruined."

Angelique raised her apron to her face and screamed rage into her clenched fists. She no longer cared what any of them saw, or what any of them thought. She dashed out of the kitchen, running, just running as fast as she could down the corridors, without direction.

The trickster spirits must have guided her feet. She turned a corner and had to skid to a stop to keep from crashing into Josette.

Those molasses brown eyes were full of tears—happy tears—and Josette smiled so widely that she could hardly talk. "Oh Angelique, isn't it wonderful? My prayers have been answered! Barnabas has asked me to marry him!"

"I... I..." Angelique choked back her rage, clutched both hands to her gut. "I burned my hand in the kitchen. Excuse me."

Angelique pushed away from Josette, and she ran madly out the back door. Her feet in flat shoes scrambled along the sandy path that seemed to tilt and sway. It felt like miles to reach the servants' quarters. She bashed her way through the door and hurled herself onto the narrow cot. Alone, she clutched her pillow into her face and wailed and screamed. Alone, she convulsed in sobs and wept for hours. Darkness fell. The room turned black, and Barnabas did not come.

#


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

In mid-September two months later—what seemed like a lifetime—Angelique set sail from Martinique in the company of the Countess duPres bound for New York. She left behind the warm tropical breezes and, for the first time in her life, felt the chill of ocean winds. The sea was more vast and empty than she had imagined. The spirits in these waters did not know her name. She clutched at the rail to gaze at the rippling darkness. Porpoises frolicked in the waves.

Men aboard the ship avoided the ladies, eying them suspiciously from afar and muttering under their breath, "Bad luck to have women aboard."

Countess duPres stayed in her cabin most of the time, complaining about the captain's appalling lack of hospitality. "Let's hope this is not representative of how Americans make their ladies feel welcome, or Josette can look forward to a very miserable marriage."

_A miserable marriage indeed_, Angelique thought.

They pulled into port at Florida, for a day, to refill their water barrels. A few of the sailors were selected by the captain to go ashore. The rest stayed on board gazing out from the railing at the sandy beach and palm trees.

Angelique and the countess ate lunch together in the cabin, almost like friends instead of mistress and servant. The tiny port window was open to the breeze. They could hear the seagulls cawing and waves lapping loudly at the wharf.

"I hope Andre doesn't delay the wedding by taking Josette to Europe first," the countess remarked. "But he's so insistent on getting her portrait painted in Florence! I wonder if it's more for his vanity than hers. A father wants to preserve the image of his daughter as an innocent maiden, as she is on the verge of changing into a wife and mother."

Angelique's stomach gurgled, and a sour taste rose up the back of her throat. She felt light-headed and dizzy. Without warning, she lurched aside and vomited into her apron.

"Are you feeling all right?" the countess asked.

"Yes." She coughed and wiped her face. "I suppose I'm feeling seasick."

"That's odd."

"What is?"

"We've been out to sea for several weeks, and you haven't been seasick until now. Do you have a fever? I hope not, or we'll all be quarantined." The countess reached out a hand and pressed her palm to Angelique's forehead.

"I... I just need some air."

Angelique rushed out of the cabin. She scrambled up the open plank steps. Ocean winds that stank of salt and fish stirred her hair. The rocking of deck twisted her stomach again. It was all she could do to reach the railing in time. She lurched over and dry heaved, coughing overboard.

_What's wrong with me?_ she wondered. The countess had observed correctly that she was not seasick before, even on the days when the winds were strong and the ship's deck had tilted wildly from side to side for hours. The other sailors had remarked upon it when they thought she was out of earshot and could not hear them gossiping. Not natural, they had said, for a woman to feel so at ease with sea legs when she's never left the shore.

Angelique slowly stroked her fragile gut. The belly muscles ached from the effort of retching. Her thoughts considered the possibilities, and one dreaded conclusion came to mind. If she was not seasick, and she was not feverish, then perhaps she carried Barnabas's child.

_No! It is not the right time. _Out of wedlock, he might react the way that Andre duPres did and reject her for daring to hatch his bastard. He would surely turn her away as a soiled and damaged woman. He would still marry Josette—her half sister—and sire children who would be blood cousins to her bastard. Porpoises leaped in the waves. They chattered in shrill cackles, like trickster spirits laughing at her predicament. _On the other hand, he might__ feel obligated to make restitution for his mistake. Perhaps he would break off the engagement with Josette to marry me instead, to give our child a proper last name, and a baptism, and an inheritance._

Angelique clutched the railing and slowly swayed back and forth with the gentle lolling of the ship's deck. _What should I do? I must be sure, first, if there is a child or not. Then I can make a decision._

Two choices lay before her: either carry the child to birth and manage the consequences somehow, or sends its little spirit away to return another day in another mother's womb where it would surely have a better life. She knew well the mixture of herbs to use at a poisonous dose—the dried leaves that Countess duPres kept for headaches and hot flashes—augmented with a spell. But it had to be done very soon so that no one would suspect. It would have to appear to be a little bout of women's vapors, and she would lay in bed with nausea for a couple of days. She would take care to clean up the mess herself—of course, she had no maid to tend to her needs, so no one would ever know.

First, she had to be sure.

Angelique waited until the ship had departed the harbor and was once again well out to sea. In the cover of darkness, as the countess slept swinging in her rope hammock, Angelique tip-toed out of the cabin. She lifted the hatches on the deck. Like a ghost in a gray dress, she slipped quietly down, and down, and down to the very bottom belly of the ship where the cargo was stored.

Rats scurried about in the shadows between the barrels and crates. Angelique sat down on the deck, her legs crossed under her skirt. She reached out her hand and beckoned to the little animal. "Come here, friend. I need you."

The rat's beady black eyes regarded her warily.

Angelique smiled sweetly. "Come, don't be afraid. Come to me."

Cautiously, the rat crept onto her skirt. She held still and waited. The rat paused, then slowly stepped onto the palm of her hand. The animal had soft fur, and its tiny heartbeat fluttered like a moth.

Angelique grabbed it tightly around the belly. The rat struggled. Its worm like tail curled around her wrist. She snapped its neck and waited for the death throes to stop. The animal quickly turned cold and started to stiffen almost immediately.

She placed it on the deck and used her fruit paring knife to carefully slice open its tender white belly. "As you are me, and I am you," she chanted. "Show me... show me true."

The rat had a small blue robin's egg in its belly. Angelique gingerly pried it out. Her hopes rose with a surge of quickened blood, though she was not exactly sure of what she hoped for.

One quick slam. She smashed the robin's egg to the deck. It shattered beneath her palm.

Empty. The eggshell was empty and dry.

Angelique closed her eyes with a sigh. She leaned back against a barrel of molasses and let the warm tears leak out of her. _So for all those nights of passionate lovemaking, he did not give me a child after all_.

"It's for the best," she whispered to herself, to the shadows, and to the dead rat in a puddle of its own blood. "Now I'm not forced to make a choice. We'll continue the journey as planned, to New York, to Boston, and to that place called Collinwood."

_I'll reach him first, before Josette does. I'll remind him of the love we __shared and show him what a mistake he is making. I must be gentle with him. He is afraid of loving me, and that is why he has settled for the safety of Josette._

"Someday he will be mine." She opened her eyes and got to her feet. "He will marry me, not her, and we will conceive a child properly in the marriage bed."

#

New York City filled the shoreline for several miles in either direction. Angelique stood at the railing to watch the scenery roll by. The ship glided up the broad, calm waters of the Hudson River and settled into port. Two- and three-story buildings were brick boxes of gabled windows. Steep roofs had black shingles. Each chimney had a little puff of smoke. Rain drizzled constantly. She raised the hood of her full-length cloak that the countess had purchased for her in the port of Baltimore. "You're going to need it," the countess had told her a week ago, and now Angelique believed her. Cold rain pelted the river's satiny sheen. Gray mists dulled the color of the buildings' bricks from red to brown. She pulled the cloak's flowing panels together, under her chin, but still felt the chill of the land.

Natalie duPres made a grand figure of departure, saying her thanks to the captain for a voyage well done. The Navy man in blue-and-white puffed on his pipe to watch her go. The countess strutted down the gangplank knowing that every sailor's eye admired her grandeur. She had dressed for the occasion of her arrival in a tailored coat beneath her fur-trimmed cloak, a muff to conceal her gloved hands, and a broad-brimmed cavalier hat.

Several sailors dragged her trunks, satchels, and crates full of wardrobe and the so-called necessities of a lady. Angelique followed as a pale shadow. Her first steps onto the solid boards of the pier caused her to wobble on her feet, strangely off-balance after two months of sea travel.

"What a dreary place!" the countess announced loudly. She strolled underneath the awning of the Customs House with an air of command, as if she were the harbor master.

The inspecting officer stepped past her on his way to survey her collection of trunks. He held a leather-bound logbook in his arms. A black ribbon marked the page. "Well, it is mid-November after all. What have you in these trunks?"

"My personal possessions," she replied with a haughty tilt of her chin.

"Show me." The officer seemed to be a pleasant sort of fellow, half bald with a fuzz of ginger curls at the nape of his neck. Soft round jowls hung over his stiff collar. Yet his tone was firm and uncompromising.

"Do you not take the word of a lady?"

"No, Ma'am, I do not. My job—and the job of every man on my staff—is to catalog what goods are being brought into the harbor."

"I can tell you what's in them," the countess said. "My clothes, a few of my belongings, and various things that will be needed at my niece's wedding. We're on our way to Maine, where my niece Josette duPres is going to marry Mister Barnabas Collins, the son of Joshua Collins..."

"I know the Collins family." The inspector gestured to the sailors who had stacked it all up. "Open 'em up."

"This is unheard of!" the countess cried out.

The sailors bent over, unlatched the trunks and raised the lids. One by one, as Natalie duPres continued to fume and rant, the inspector poked through the wardrobe items with the tip of his walking cane. He disturbed the neatly folded, frilly underclothes. He rustled the paper that wrapped each item of porcelain—the tea cups and saucers, the sugar bowl, the exquisite pot with the stenciled yellow roses. He even had the audacity to open the varnished mahogany box containing a full set of sterling silver spoons, forks, and knives.

"By the way, has either of you been sick recently?"

"No," both Natalie and Angelique replied in unison.

Finally, when the countess's cheeks were scarlet with outrage, he marked off his ledger and matter of factly said, "You're clear."

"I never!"

"Many apologies for the inconvenience, Madame," he said in a monotone. "I'm just doing my job."

He turned in the direction of the ship, on his way to continue inspection of the large cargo crates that were being lugged up from the hold. He caught a glimpse of Angelique, and he paused to meet her stare. Something of a sympathy flickered from his eyes as if to say, _I've only had to endure this woman for ten minutes, bu__t you poor thing. You work for her._

#

A pair of middle-aged slaves met them at the curbside of the harbor building. Two men with very dark complexions, their skin as black as their tailcoats, carried themselves with the poise of refined gentlemen. They reminded her of Jean-Baptiste after the master sold away his wife Claire, their eyes were dull with the suppressed fury and despair of their situation. Angelique watched them loading the countess's luggage into the back of an elegant landau coach, and admired their grace and strength. _They should be lords in their own domain,_ she thought. _What an upside-down world it is, that the ones with true power are not the ones in charge_.

The coach carried them through the broad streets of New York City, avenues of well-packed sand pitched with pebbles that made for a smooth ride. Not that the countess was pleased with the comfort of the copper springs under the leather cushions. She fidgeted and fussed with the arrangement of her thick skirts. "Did he have to send such a small coach? I'm so cramped, in here, with you... We're packed into crates and rolled along with the rest of the luggage."

Angelique gazed out of the open, curtained window. Rain spritzed her cheeks. She watched the buildings pass by, the broad panes of glass and the shutters painted dark blue. The people strolling the roadside wore as many layers as she did herself, cloaks over full length skirts, capes over tailcoats, and everyone sported a hat. So many white-skinned people all in one place! Like termites in a fallen log. She thought of how easy it would be to abandon the countess, to slip anonymously into that crowd, and be lost forever. But then she thought of her beloved Barnabas and for his sake alone, she stayed.

The coach carried them to the exclusive neighborhoods on the Isle of Manhattan, to Pearl Street that paralleled the East River, to the home of Mister Curtis Braithwaite. He was a wealthy banker with considerable investments at various ports around the world, but a man who—according to Natalie duPres—had never set foot on a ship. "We shall have to remember to always speak English," the countess said. "Even when we are alone together. Mister Braithwaite does not know a word of French and he insists upon it."

"But madame, is not his wife your dearest childhood friend? Hasn't he learned any French from her?"

Natalie duPres laughed off Angelique's comment with a wave of her satin-gloved hand. "Oh, you naïve girl, don't you know? A wife's duty is to obey her husband in all things. If Mister Braithwaite does not wish anything but English spoken in his house, then for as long as we are under his roof, there is no such thing as the French language. My friend Suzanne is now Susan."

Upon their arrival at the three-story brick mansion, the countess waited for a butler—a light-skinned mulatto in a gentleman's suit. Flanked by an entourage of teenaged slaves in beige waistcoats, the butler gracefully descended the steep stairs. "Welcome to New York, countess." He opened the door of her carriage and bowed.

Natalie duPres emerged in all her splendor: a tailored suit coat that flared out over her broad layers of gathered taffeta over satin petticoats. A peek of lace ruffles showed beneath the hemline—just for a momentary glimpse—as she handled her skirts to ascend the home's front steps.

"Is Mister Braithwaite aware of my arrival?"

"Yes, countess, he'll be along presently." The butler hurried ahead of her to open the paneled mahogany door.

The countess removed her large feathered hat and tossed it aside without a care of who would catch it. Servants bowed in the hallway to her greet her. Angelique followed, unnoticed, in her shadow.

Natalie duPres led a grand procession along a broad hallway of black hardwood floors and walls plastered white. They passed life-sized oil portraits in gilded frames. Tapestry panels of faded threads hung on brass rods. Standing guard by the inner connecting door was an empty suit of armor like something worn by Sir Lancelot in _Le Morte d'Arthur._ The highly polished steel had a sheen as bright as sterling silver. One metallic glove supported a six-foot long sword, the hilt molded in an elaborate cluster of vines and lilies. Angelique looked into the helmet's grill in search of traces of a Knight of the Round Table. She saw nothing of a spirit haunting the metallic shell; the suit had never been worn into a real battle.

The only hint of a shadowy presence lingered deeper in the house, upstairs, and quietly far away. Angelique sensed a mood of death—a recent death—that pervaded the house like the stench of burned fish.

In the parlor, they were served by a white English maid wearing a long black dress and a bleached apron. She offered the countess a pot of tea and a plate of shortbread biscuits. "Do you take sugar and cream, my lady?"

"Of course." The countess took up her throne on an upholstered loveseat by the blazing fire. She arranged her legs in such a way that spread the lace ruffle of her petticoat's hem into a perfect crescent.

Angelique remained on her feet, near the arch of the doorway. In the hallway, the servants one after the other carried the various trunks and valises and satchels. Perhaps she should have excused herself to go supervise the unloading of her mistress's luggage, but she was not so eager to go explore an unfamiliar house where she did not know the mood of the spirits of those who had died here before. Something unnamed whispered in the shadows, and she was not sure of being welcome.

Their host entered with an arm extended and held it forth all the way. He strolled to the countess, received her hand, bent over and lightly kissed her fingertips. "Natalie, how delightful to see you."

"Curtis, always a pleasure."

He was the oldest man that Angelique had ever seen. His white cotton hair was not powdered but his natural color. His pale cheeks sagged over his stiff collar. A paunch bulged his cream silk waistcoat forward. The long tailcoat of indigo velvet was the only color on his whole person. Everything else was pale: a bleached cravat, lace cuffs, ivory breeches, white stockings, and gray flat shoes.

"I trust your journey was pleasant?" He carried himself slowly with a kind of fragile caution.

"As much as one can expect of a sea voyage." Natalie looked expectantly to the connecting doorway in time to see the last of the servants trot by with armloads of hat boxes. "Where is Susan?"

"Oh." Mister Braithwaite turned aside sharply. He avoided the countess, but in coming around, he came full face to Angelique. Only she saw the melancholy grief that twisted his papery face. "Of course, you couldn't know... There was no way to let you know..."

"What is it?" Natalie asked.

"She..." Mister Braithwaite rested a hand across his belly as he drew in a breath. He wore a sapphire signet ring that glimmered darkly against his pale hand. "She passed away recently."

The countess gasped. The tea cup she held rattled on its saucer. "What a tragedy! I'm so sorry to hear this."

"Thank you."

"May I ask what happened?"

He sank down to an upholstered chair and, without looking to the countess, stared gloomily into the blazing fire. "There was recently an epidemic of yellow fever in the city."

"Yellow fever!" the countess exclaimed.

"It's the price we pay for allowing ships to come into our port from all over the world. The harbor master missed the signs and failed to quarantine the vessel. Over the last few months, several hundreds of people sickened and I had hoped to be spared. The city council made no public announcement. They tried to avoid widespread panic. The doctors at first said it was limited to degenerates and the poor living in squalor, but they were wrong. By the middle of October, the coffins had stacked up in the graveyards because the diggers couldn't keep up."

"My God," said the countess with her gloved hand resting at her throat.

"It was the last week of the month," he said quietly, still staring into the fire. "On Tuesday, she was her usual cheery self. By Friday, she was gone."

Angelique looked to the empty hallway. Now she sensed the drift of eyes, of spirits lost and bewildered, not quite formed in the shadows. She knew the echoes and footprints of those who had gone before. She recalled, now, seeing black mourning bands tied onto the sleeves of a few servants. The mistress of the house was not the only one who had died.

"It's all over now," Braithwaite assured her, at last looking away from the fire to his guest's panic stare. "The mosquitoes all perished with the first bite of frost. There haven't been any new reports of fever for several weeks."

The countess put down her cup and saucer. She plucked out a lace handkerchief and fanned her chin with it. "Forgive me, Curtis, but I'm feeling quite exhausted from the journey. Would someone show me the way to my room?"

"Of course."

Angelique followed the countess up the stairs. The carpeting had a well-worn tread down the center. They were shown by the English maid into a clean room, furnished all in blue and lavender, well lit by a west-facing window. "If you need anything at all, Ma'am, just let me know," said the maid.

Natalie duPres held her silence until the bedroom door was securely closed. Then she whirled about to descend close to Angelique's ear. "We're supposed to wait for Josette's ship to arrive from Europe, but we can't possible stay here in a plague house! We'll stay the night. By morning I'll think of some excuse to proceed with all haste to Maine."

Angelique bit down to restrain her thrill. She would not have to wait so long to see her Barnabas again. She would rush to his arms ahead of Josette.

"Don't say a word about any of this, Angelique, when we arrive at Collinwood! We'll pretend it's some misunderstanding, a mix-up, a mistake that we'll be arriving before the bride. Let's hope that the Collins family is not so unfortunate as this one."


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Rain poured over the next six days, for the whole time it took Natalie and Angelique to journey by carriage from New York City, upland to Boston and to the woodlands beyond. They slept by night in roadside taverns of lesser and lesser comforts. By day they jostled on countryside farm trails and wagon paths with deep ruts that strained the carriage's axles.

On the sixth day they reached the recently incorporated town of Bangor—a modest collection of about five hundred shingled homes and brick buildings. The tavern was more of a converted barn than a lodging establishment. But it was here that Angelique was introduced to a sweet, creamy beverage spiced with a jigger of rum: the hot toddy.

"How much farther is it, to Collinwood?" the countess asked the innkeeper.

"About a day, if you're walking." He wiped at the bar's counter with an already dirty rag.

Natalie blinked rapidly. "But, we have a carriage."

"Oh, then, two days."

From Bangor, the carriage wheels churned through the black mud of Maine for another day and a half. Several layers of thick blankets swaddled them together, like mismatched babes in the same cradle, but still they could not keep warm. They kept the curtains drawn over the carriage's windows to shield against the heavy rain that pelted the canvas. On occasion, it sounded as if someone were throwing pebbles at the carriage roof. "Hail," the countess explained to Angelique's wondering expression. "They call it hail, when the raindrops freeze."

Angelique recalled the letters that Barnabas had written describing in poetic detail the features of this stormy land. He had mentioned bizarre things such as hail, and frost, and high dunes of white snow. She had never imagined from his words that it would be like this. Even by day, nothing in the landscape had color; the road, the trees, and the sky were faded to a dull palette of brown and gray. Now she understood why Barnabas had enjoyed the garden in Martinique so much, but at the same time, she thrilled to the drums of the thunder and the almost human scream of stormy winds.

The axle cranked. The coach lurched tilting sideways. It jostled to a dead stop. Outside, the coachman cracked his whip and hollered. The horses grunted, straining in their harnesses, but could not get the carriage to move one more inch.

"What's happening?" the countess asked out the window.

The driver's boots squelched in the mud. He opened the door and displayed his weary, unshaven frown. "Stuck in the mud. Can't budge."

Countess duPres waved her hand at his face. "Well, do something! Put a board under the wheel and pry it out."

Rain showered onto the man's broad brimmed hat. Rain made a liquid fringe over his ears and obscured his face. "Beg your pardon, Ma'am, but that's not possible. I'm just one man."

"Then what do you propose we do?" she challenged him.

"Walk."

"Surely you're not suggesting that I walk through the mud, in this tempest?"

"I am." He gazed off to the road ahead. "Collinwood's about two, maybe three miles. A little rain ain't goin' to kill you."

""I refuse. It's out of the question!" The countess held the blankets tighter to her chest. She settled in to the carriage seat as if ready to sleep there for the night.

"Then I'll walk and bring back help," he said.

"No! What if there are highwaymen on the road? What if someone comes to rob me of my jewels and silver? Who will defend me?"

The coachman tapped the handle of a flintlock pistol stuck in his thick belt. "Can you shoot one of these?"

Both women looked back at him, wide-eyed, and shook their heads, no. The idea of Barnabas only three miles away kindled a fire in her gut. Angelique made a decision. She threw off the blanket from her lap.

"I shall walk to Collinwood, mistress." She pulled up the hood of her cloak, and crouching, she emerged into the rain.

"Alone?" Natalie asked.

"I'll say a prayer to Saint Christopher. I'm sure I'll be fine." Angelique smiled a good-bye and launched off. She passed the team of horses standing miserable in their harnesses, heads bowed against the pounding rain. She proceeded along the muddy road through the forest.

Daylight struggled to pierce through the storm, enough to make everything a dull shade of gray. Her ankles sank with every step but she did not mind. It was her way of getting acquainted with the _loa_ of this land—Barnabas's land—and she sensed the heart of him pulsing in the soil. She had thought that _loa_ were only in Martinique and certainly not in the lifeless brick cities of New York and Boston. Even the countess must have sensed it, the woman with no real intuition of the unseen relying on her Tarot cards.

But here, in the wild black woods, each tree shook in the wet wind and each rattling branch had a spirit with a secret name. _May__ I pass? _Her mind whispered to the unseen eyes in the shadows who watched her go by. Though a stranger in their midst, they recognized her as one who could know them. They allowed her. As a polite visitor, she carefully stepped over protruding roots and caressed the coarse trunks of oak and aspen and elm. Lichen was a pale green lace showing her the direction. She did not so much as crack a fallen twig with her heel.

The majestic house shined as a lighthouse in the storm. Partially hidden by the woods, the trees swaying in the wind lifted their branches and revealed to her the way. Collinwood, the place was called. The very land bore his name. _Names are power, _her nursemaid Veronique had taught her. By knowing the name of the place, Angelique felt confident she would be able to call out the forces sleeping dormant in the soil. If she should need to fight to win her lover, then she would need every ally—seen and unseen.

#

Arriving at the house, she ascended an incline of broad stone steps. At last, after more than an hour of trudging in the rainy mud, she came under the shelter of a roof. She passed between gigantic Doric columns like birch trees stripped of their bark. The stone was lifeless and without spirit, but the pillars stood on an older sleeping _loa_ in the soil. Never before had she felt such a sense of sacredness in a place. She had the urge to kiss the ground and beg its permission to cross. Gingerly, she stepped from flagstone to flagstone—avoiding the mossy cracks—and approached the main door.

On the door was mounted a knocker of a brass lion's head biting a ring in its mouth. Angelique rapped the ring against the wood. From inside she heard men's voices indistinctly. She could not make out their words but she sensed they were arguing. Angelique strained to hear more clearly, to try and identify Barnabas's voice if he were one of them, but the rain kept pouring and rushed over the roof and stones with the force of a mighty waterfall.

The door swung inward. Angelique looked expectantly to whoever had opened it, hoping to see him there. It had been so long since she had seen him. She ached for the sight of his face.

Instead of Barnabas, a white woman dressed in a plain cotton gown of brown-and-gray stripes held the door. "Why look at you! You're soaked!" Without so much as a _good afternoon_ or a _won't you come inside_, the woman grabbed Angelique by the forearm and yanked her in over the threshold.

Angelique was so glad to get out of the rain that she allowed herself to be tugged about like a child, though this waxy-faced woman appeared not much older. Twenty-five at most. She had a plain round face without a trace of powder or paste. So she was certainly not the lady of the house, as if there were any doubt from her coarse gown and the narrow cotton ruffle gathered around the neckline. She had dull brown hair styled into a limp coiffure. Her eyes were devoid of spirit.

"Stay right there, dearie," the woman ordered. "I'll get you a towel."

Angelique closed the door behind herself. She obediently stood there dripping wet on the throw rug just inside the door. Awkward, she was not sure what to do or where to go. The woman hurried off a few feet, down the hallway, to open the door of a little closet under the stairs.

Just inside the front door was a coat rack and on it several wool capes. To her thrill, she saw Barnabas's walking cane with the silver wolf's head. Her heart surged in a thrill; he was home!

A young girl came down the stairs. By her dainty pink gown and lacy bonnet, she had to be Barnabas's younger sister Sarah. Angelique pretended not to recognize her from past visions when her mystic eyes had viewed a scene. She smiled politely at the little girl as if seeing her for the first time. Sarah had grown taller since Angelique had last viewed her—she would be nine years old. She had a gentle open face, blue eyes, and light brown hair that hung loosely to past her hips.

Sarah carried a ceramic mug and reached over the stairs' railing to gesture with it. "Phyllis, my cider smells funny!"

The servant woman, Phyllis, gathered a large fluffy blue towel out of the closet underneath the stairs. She scowled up at the little girl a few steps above her.

"I told you, Sarah, drink your cider and take your nap! Now, you go back to the nursery or I'll have to get stern with you."

"But it smells funny and it tastes bad." Sarah looked to Angelique for an ally. She hopped down the rest of the way and raised her mug of cider towards her face. "Here, you smell it."

One breath, and Angelique caught the unmistakable scent of rum. _Why would someone give rum to a child?_

Phyllis rushed to push herself in between them on the pretense of handing Angelique the towel. Probably in her dim-witted audacity, she thought she had gotten there in time. She man-handled the little girl, a bit roughly perhaps. By a hawk's grip on her shoulders turned little Sarah around. She quickly patted a smack to Sarah's rump. "I said, there's nothing wrong with your cider. Drink it all up, every drop. Go take your nap! Don't be so spoiled or I'll tell your father."

Sarah glanced nervously to the open archway framed in salmon-colored columns. Her stare extended to a parlor from where the men's voices were coming.

Angelique heard the sonorous snobbish stern voice of Joshua Collins himself, scolding, "How will you ever get through life if you give such importance to really unimportant things?"

"Yes father," Barnabas grumbled.

While dabbing her face and hair with the towel, Angelique moved forward to the columned archway that separated the foyer from the parlor. She no longer cared about Sarah and her rum-spiked cider, or Phyllis, or the father of the house. She got her first full view of the parlor's warm-colored décor, the rouge drapes, the luxurious Persian rug, and a fireplace carved from one gigantic block of pink marble. A magnificent crystal chandelier bolted to the rafters cast twinkles into her eyes, but she did not care for the room or its elegant furnishings.

Barnabas stood on the rug facing the man seated in the chair. He was almost within arms' reach. When he turned about to look at her, she had an urge to rush into his embrace. Two quick steps and she would be there—to hold him and kiss him in front of everyone. It took all of her will to restrain herself.

"Angelique!" he exclaimed. "Wha-... what are you doing here?"

"You are surprised?"

"Astonished! We weren't expecting the countess for at least a week. Where is she?" Barnabas looked down at the mud-soaked hem of her long skirt. "And why are you soaking wet?"

Continuing to pat and dab the towel at her skirts, she said, "Your roads, monsieur. Pigsties, the countess calls them. The carriage is in the mud. It's stuck!"

Barnabas looked to the broad bay window, its glass panes dark and speckled with rain. "Where?"

Feeling a surge of fury and frustration, Angelique cast her eyes downward. "Too far for my lady to walk."

Phyllis standing beside her lightly huffed through her nose. She shared a knowing glance that the gentlemen did not see, servant-to-servant, a private joke, the impotence of servitude. At that moment, Angelique decided to dislike the woman. _I am nothing like you, Phyllis. I am no one's servant but his._

Barnabas said, "Well, I must go immediately. Come in and rest."

He started to reach for her elbow but then changed his mind about touching her. Instead he turned around and used the outstretched hand as a gesture of introduction. "Father, you remember the Countess duPres's maid, Angelique?"

"Monsieur Collins." She dipped her knees in a graceful curtsey.

Joshua Collins was the same sour, bitter man with small eyes and a large frown as she remembered him from his brief visits to Martinique. He looked off and away at something else, at nothing in particular, as he spoke to her. Without so much as a _bon jour,_ he said, "Your mistress wrote us that she would be visiting New York until the day before the wedding."

Glad that he had no news of the yellow fever plague, she answered, "The city does not suit my lady."

"Well, I wish we'd known she'd changed her plans. Barnabas, fetch one of the stable boys or Ben..." He leaned on his walking cane to stand up out of the chair. His legs seemed to be in pain; the price of growing old. "I'll go inform your mother of our visitor's arrival."

Barnabas asked the servant woman, "Will you see that Angelique is shown her room, Phyllis?"

"Of course, sir."

Barnabas hurried to the door and pulled his long black cloak from the hook. He raised his arms to swirl it around himself, settle it on his shoulders, and quickly tied the strings under his stiff collar.

Angelique approached to stand facing him. "I must return with you!"

"It isn't necessary," he said.

"It may not be to you, sir, but it is to my mistress."

Barnabas regarded her briefly. His face was a stone mask of self-control, allowing nothing of his thoughts to show. Yet deep within his dark eyes something unnamed glimmered. What was it? Desire? Embarrassment?

"Then, very well," he said. "Come the back way to the stables."

Barnabas started off down the hall in swift strong strides, not glancing back to be sure if she followed or not. Angelique gazed down the long hallway to the dark-on-dark figure moving easily in the shadows.

Phyllis brushed past her on the way up the stairs. "I'll be up in the nursery with Sarah. It was nice to meet you, uh, Angelique. My name is Phyllis Wick, the governess. I'm sure we'll be good friends."

#

Her hopes of a romantic coach ride in the rain were dashed when Barnabas invited two laborers to come along. One was a stout and sober fellow named John Riggs. The other was a tall burly white man referred to simply as Ben.

Angelique tucked herself into the coach seat next to him, with all the frustrating layers of clothing and cloaks in between them. As near to him as she had been in months and yet farther away than ever. She could feel the strength of him beneath all those layers of wool, feel the movement of their bodies synchronized, jostled together by the rocking of the coach. She looked to him but he avoided her gaze. She only saw him in profile, his strong features, his hooked nose like a raven's beak. Outside the coach, the black storm-whipped trees swayed. The wind howled. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. All of it a fitting backdrop to his stormy mood. _This is his domain_, she thought. _The spirit of his blood is in this soil, not in the white sands of Martinique. He does not belong in the fair skies and sunshine; he belongs in the dark with me._

#

Angelique spent the whole of the afternoon with the countess's luggage and hanging up her delicate underclothes on a cord by the fireplace mantle. Rain had seeped into everything, and the feathers of some of her hats were wilted. She wiped the satin shoes and laid out the assorted items of the lady's toiletries on the dressing table. She despaired over what the rain had done to the velvets—water flattened the delicate plush. Angelique whispered an invocation to the down-like fuzz to encourage it to fluff up softly once more.

When evening fell, she descended to the kitchen and supervised the Collins's staff preparing supper. Every last one of them was of white European stock, from the head cook on down to the girl who shucked the peas. It seemed the Collins family did not own a single black slave. The Irishman named Riggs had managed to snare a few quail and a pheasant, and the plucked birds were being roasted on an iron rack.

"Where is the bread?" Angelique asked.

"Bread? We don't serve bread every day," said the cook, a severe woman who spoke in a foreign accent that harshly spit her consonants. "I'll make a _Weihnachtsstollen_ when I burn ze Yule Log, but tonight we've got rice and cornbread and pumpkin."

"Pump-...kin?" she stammered over the unfamiliar word. Orange gourds were being boiled and mashed into a pulp. "I'm not sure if my lady will like that. She always has bread and butter with her supper."

"We've got no butter."

Angelique's eyes flared wide. "No butter!"

"Not today, but we'll churn some for Christmas."

The rest of the evening passed in a daze, of Angelique on her feet gliding around the supper table. She assisted with serving plate after plate and listened to the countess complain about the lack of seasoning, the absence of any sauce, the clams and scallops overcooked, and the French peas boiled to a green mush. Joshua Collins fumed and scowled, consuming his dinner in silence. Barnabas followed his father's example and said very little at dinner, but occasionally gazed off at the large bay windows running the full length of the dining room. Perhaps he thought of other days, or perhaps was thinking of nights yet to come.

Naomi Collins, the mistress of the house and Barnabas's mother, did not come down for supper. Since their arrival, the matriarch had not made an appearance at all. The word was that she felt unwell, which Angelique expected would cause some concern, but instead the men seemed to take it as a normal course of events.

After supper came more chores: lugging buckets of boiled water upstairs for the countess's bath and sprinkling potpourri into the water, and warming the bed's mattress with a brass pot full of stones heated in the fire. The hours dragged on, darker and darker, before the countess was finally tucked in bed and Angelique was free of the lady's demands.

#

She rushed down the corridor to his bedroom. She did not even carry a candle to light the way so that no one still awake at this hour might see. Lightly she rapped her knuckles on the door.

Barnabas called from within, "Who's there?"

She did not answer in case someone else down the hall—his mother, his sister, or the governess Phyllis—might hear her voice. Considerate of causing a scandal for him, she did not dare allow him to be seen with a young woman coming to his bedroom door at this hour.

Her answer was to lightly knock again. She waited, waited for him in the dark. Her yearning quickened her blood. Her whole body tensed like a spring. If he did not open the door soon, she would call upon the forces of every tree and fire spirit she knew to blast the door off its hinges.

Once more, he called through the door, "Who is it?"

He opened the door at last. The wood-paneled room was all golden brightly lit by candles and a blaze in the fireplace. Barnabas blocked the light of the room, himself a deep brown shadow. Angelique smiled as she murmured in a sultry voice, "A ghost from your past."

She rushed inside, past him, and spun to a stop near the foot of his bed. He just stood there like an idiot gawking at her. She had to insist for his own good, "Close the door, quickly!"

Barnabas with a hand on the knob stepped backward and shut the door behind him.

"I've waited for this moment all day long." Angelique reached forth her arms to him, still so far away, still hanging onto the doorknob. "Come to me. Hold me!"

"I'm sorry, I can't." Barnabas crossed from the door to the window in broad, quick strides. He took a stand with his back to her at the windowsill. His fist clutched the drapes. His onyx ring glimmered darkly in the candlelight.

"Why?"

"You know very well." He sighed like a man in pain.

Angelique took a step towards him. "Barnabas, look at me!" When he did not turn around, she insisted, "Do you think I'm not pretty anymore?"

"Of course you are," he said. "But I... well... I should have..."

"Come to me, Barnabas." Angelique reached across the empty gulf between them. If only he would look at her now and see her gentle welcoming smile. "Hold me and let me remind you."

"No, please don't. Oh, I know it's wrong to say it this way, but... Well, it's my fault, I know... It was my weakness to... to..."

Angelique filled in the pause. "Love me?"

He rotated away from the window and dared to look straight at her. "I love Josette."

"Do you?" She rushed at him, landing against his chest as if falling from a great height. She clutched his shoulders and leaned into him, rising on her toes to press her cheek to his shoulder. From sitting by the fire, one side of him felt warm but the other sleeve was chilled. She slipped her arm around his neck and squeezed him close. He felt like hugging a tree that would not bend to the wind.

"Angelique, please stop." He pried her arms off his neck and held her off, firmly, at arms' length. "Josette is coming."

"She's not here yet." Angelique glanced aside to his bed. The elegant frame had a high headboard carved out of mahogany. The rich quilt of burgundy twinkled with gold brocade. Briefly she imagined the two of them, naked and clutching each other, rocking about on that luxurious stack of mattresses.

Barnabas pushed her off a little farther. He stepped back to brace himself against the windowsill. "Stop it. Have some pride in yourself."

"I have no pride!" she cried out. "I don't want to have pride. I want you!"

"You mustn't."

Angelique clutched on his arm, feeling the strength of his lean muscle through his blousy sleeve. If only those arms would seize her as they had so many times before. "You are as cold as that wind outside your house!"

"I'm not cold," he groaned. "But I want to be... I have to be!"

"Why?"

"Because when you and I... when we... I... I didn't know that I was going to marry Josette then..." As soon as he said the words 'marry' and 'Josette' in the same breath, a howling wind filled her mind. His words blurred and Angelique could hardly understand a word of his eloquent, probably rehearsed speech. She only came back to clarity when he looked her straight in the eye and finished, "You and I, well, it's quite impossible."

"Are you sad about it? You still desire me, don't you?"

"What good would it be to admit that? We both have different roles to play now."

She drew back from him, her jaw setting into a firm frown. "And what is my role? The countess's maid?"

"For now, perhaps, but in this new land you may have an opportunity to make something more of yourself."

Angelique opened her arms out to the sides, open, in the pose like the Blessed Virgin Mary offering heavenly compassion to the lost weeping souls of earth. "If you only knew me as I truly am."

"What do you mean?"

"I am offering _you_ an opportunity, Barnabas, to take me in your arms as you did those nights in Martinique. Allow me to serve you, and I will show you..." She paused to dredge up a quote from the Shakespeare play that was his favorite. "...more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"No, Angelique." He crossed to the door and took hold of the knob. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave, if you would."

Arms stiff at her sides, she prowled to the door and restrained herself from hurling a wave of magic at him. With a mere thought, she could push him out through the glass of the second story window. "You will come to me, Barnabas."

"I think not."

"You will see." Angelique allowed him to open the door for her, like a gentleman would for a lady. She stepped into the corridor without a backward glance.

#


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

All night and into the next morning, she turned over schemes in her mind of all the spells she knew how to do, and the spells she had yet to try. None of them fit her purpose. Each of her plots ended with Barnabas as her mindless slave, and above all, she wanted his mind intact. She dared not tamper with that spectacular mind of his that had spoken of Descartes and Shakespeare and the epic poems of Greek men long dead. She did not want a puppet or a zombie lover; she wanted him as he was in Martinique, if only Josette had not gotten in the way.

The eyes in the flames watched her, silently, offering no advice but clearly amused in waiting to see what she would do.

She went about her daily chores alone, in service to the Countess duPres and apart from the other servants of the Collins household. Undergarments had to be laundered separately in a tub of freshly drawn well water scented with lavender potpourri. Stockings had to be hung to dry near the lady's bedroom fireplace. Shoes had to be brushed and scrubbed clean of every trace of soil, and the inner soles sprinkled with talcum powder. First thing in the morning, the bed sheets needed to be stripped off the mattress and aired indoors to avoid freezing to stiffness outside. Whereas, in Martinique, she would have aired the lady's blankets in the sun, there was no sunshine in Collinwood. _Of course he sees me as nothing better than a servant, if I do nothing else but labor at __menial chores. What can I do to make him call for me?_

She recalled the advice that Countess duPres had offered to Josette, a strategy of courtship that she had ridiculed at the time._ A lady must entice a man with her charms, but not directly. When he fina__lly comes to her, she must at first reject him—but not too vehemently. Only in this courtly dance will a lady learn of his true intentions, for if a gentleman is determined to pursue her through all obstacles, then his love will be everlasting._ Perhaps it was not such a silly idea after all, considering that Josette's manipulations had won his offer of marriage.

What Barnabas needed was an obstacle to fight through.

She waited until evening for the little girl Sarah to go to supper with the family in the dining room. Phyllis Wick the governess spent, at best, half an hour tidying up the playroom before she went downstairs to eat her supper in the kitchen.

Angelique searched the girl's playroom for any remnant of her older brother's childhood. She passed over a miniature tea service for six dolls elaborate down to the last details of sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and varying sizes of tin spoons. She pawed through baskets full of silk thread and bolster pillows spiked with pins for the girl to learn to make lace. Sarah owned some balls for tossing, a wooden flute that Barnabas had bought for her in the West Indies, and some puzzle boxes from China and India too recently acquired to have belonged to Barnabas as a boy.

The window seat was a built-in chest with a cushioned lid. She went there as a last resort. As expected, she found a variety of useless artifacts from Sarah's infancy: a flannel swaddling blanket embroidered with the girl's name, smaller sized gowns and lace bonnets, and a silhouette portrait in black felt framed on white silk. _Did Joshua Collins discard everything of his son's childhood when his precious daughter was born? _Then, just as she was about to give up in defeat, Angelique discovered at the very bottom of the chest a wooden figurine.

It was a soldier carved out of wood, the paint chipped and worn, but still recognizable as the blue uniform of the American troops, a black tricorn hat, and holding a musket in one hand. The joints of its arms and legs were fitted with pegs so that a child could adjust the figurine's position. One might imagine a little boy making the wooden soldier march into battle with General George Washington for the glory of the revolution. A lonely little boy once played solitary in his room and idolized the heroics of his patriot father.

#

Angelique brought the wooden soldier back to her own room. She carefully laid it on the top of her bureau with the tenderness of settling a baby in its cradle. "You have a very important job, little soldier," she said in French, the language she preferred when she was alone. "Would you like to know what it is? No, I don't think I should tell you. I think you should be surprised along with the rest of them."

Speaking to the painted eyes, as if the wooden figurine were alive but sleeping, Angelique started to feel the power of her passion go into it. In the wood itself was an old native spirit, a lonely fragment of all that remained of the tree from which it was made. She imagined Barnabas handling the toy, using his own voice to make it seem to shout out orders, or obey orders—and that was most powerful magic of all. Barnabas as a boy had infused the figurine with a personality and a life force shared with his own. She smiled broadly at the swell of force radiating from the simple figurine. A power came not from herself or from the spirit of the wood, but Barnabas Collins himself. She could not have fabricated a stronger talisman.

Someone knocked on her bedroom door. Barnabas asked, "May I come in, Angelique?"

Hurriedly, she stashed the wooden soldier in the top drawer of her bureau. Then she rushed across the room, not far because the room was very small. She opened the door to let him inside. "Aren't you afraid someone might see you in the servants' quarters?"

Barnabas took a stand by her writing desk. He looked awkward and uncomfortable, drumming his fingers on the back of her upright chair. "I came here to tell you I'm sorry about what happened last night."

"You are?"

"I see no reason why we can't be good friends."

She gasped, restraining an urge to laugh wildly at how ridiculous he sounded. "Merely good friends?"

"Anything else would be quite out of the question. You can see that, can't you?"

In three quick steps, she thrust herself against his chest. Her hands reached to his shoulders and clutched at the soft velvet of his green coat. "I only see one thing: the real reason you came here! You didn't come here to tell me that you just wanted to be friends."

"Yes, I did."

"No, no, my darling, you could have told me that anywhere else in the house! You didn't need to come secretly to my room to do it, but you did." She raised herself on her toes to nearly equal his height. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder and inhaled the wood-smoke scent of his collar and bleached cravat. "And I'm very glad."

His trembling hand grasped hold of her arms. "Angelique, listen to me."

"You cannot resist me, Barnabas. Just as I cannot resist you." She raised her cheek off his shoulder in order to gaze up into his face.

"You don't understand any more than you did last night." Just inches away, she felt the warmth of his words. His breath carried the aroma of cinnamon and coffee.

"Oh yes I do understand! Our destiny was sealed those nights in Martinique. You haven't forgotten those nights, have you?"

Barnabas said more tenderly, "I will never forget them."

"Nor will I, what we meant to each other those nights. That is the only reality. You understand? The only reality!"

Without warning, he swooped into a kiss that smothered her face. Angelique gripped him behind the neck, hanging on for her life. His tongue thrust in between her teeth, plunging to her throat, almost gagging her. She whimpered a little into his mouth. Heat poured down through her core. All she could see in the darkness of her closed eyes was the fantasy of them tumbling and staggering over to her narrow little cot—just a few steps away—and losing themselves in a wild drumming dance.

All too soon, he broke away. He launched off across the room. Five quick steps took him to the curtained window. There he stood facing the wall.

Wobbling off balance, Angelique shouted at his back, "I told you, you cannot resist me!"

He whirled around and faced her. "I admit, you're difficult to resist. I lost control of myself for a moment. I'm sorry."

She laughed heartily at how pathetic and tortured his confusion. She swooped in close, returning to the position they had just been standing. Once more, she gripped the lapels of his tailcoat. "You didn't lose control of yourself. You did what you wanted to do."

"No, I shouldn't have." He pried her hands away and forcefully pressed her arms down to her sides. "Do you understand? I'm going to marry Josette because I love her! And to continue any relationship with you would be..."

_Wonderful!_ she said with her eyes.

"...quite wrong. Angelique, stop making this so difficult for me!"

Fury gave her the strength to wrench herself out of his grip. Gone was her smile. Gone went the shine of hope and love from her eyes. Her hands clawed at the empty air between them, like a prisoner reaching through the bars of a jail cell. "All those sweet words you said to me in Martinique! They meant nothing? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

He looked to her with a sad, pleading frown. "They meant something then, but only then. It can't continue. I'm engaged to marry Josette now."

She walked away from him. Fury blurred her sights. She was hardly aware of the furniture, the walls, the room—all the solid things around her became insubstantial, unclear. It felt as if the two of them stood on a bleak gray cliff overlooking the crashing spray of sea. A gray wind rushed between them.

"Please leave me, Barnabas. I would like to be alone."

He crossed to the door. His shoulders slouched in confused defeat. With his hand on the knob, he paused. "May we still be friends?"

Angelique stared ahead at the brick wall. "I will always be closer to you than you know." With the storm of rage blowing in her ears, she could hardly hear him leave. Soon she felt the absence of his solid presence and the closing of the door.

Trembling with rage, she rushed for the top drawer of her bureau. She pulled out a kerchief monogrammed with the letter B and the wooden soldier.

Then she caught her own reflection in the small warped mirror of cheaply made glass. Seeing herself with the fire of killing wrath in her green eyes, she did not recognize her own face. _This is his fault; this is what his cruelty has done to me._

"No, little soldier," she said in French to the figurine. "I think you shall need to wait a while longer to perform your duty. I will wait until Josette arrives. It would be wrong if she weren't here to see Barnabas suffer."

#

Word came at nightfall that Josette and her father Andre duPres had indeed arrived. A large carriage lit by torches pulled up to the base of the grand staircase. The weather had been clear all day. Servants had labored for hours to shovel up ramparts of slush to either side of the road in preparation for their arrival. _No hailstones or rain for you... No carriage stuck in the mud... N__o hiking for an hour until you're soaked to the bone... What a charmed life you lead, Josette._

Angelique hurried in from the pantry, hoping to the first to greet Josette before anyone else in the house. Especially she wanted to intercept ahead of Barnabas getting there.

She found Josette standing in the parlor. She wore her beige and lavender traveling gown, a smart tailored coat with a feminine version of a man's lapels and double-breasted buttons. She had removed her dainty hat, adorned with silk flowers, and carelessly tossed it to a chair. As always, Josette expected that someone else would be tidying up after her.

"Mademoiselle!" Angelique cried out a grand performance of seeming overjoyed to see her mistress.

Josette answered in French, "I'm so glad to have arrived at last!"

The two young women clasped hands and smiled broadly into each others' faces. For all her arduous travels, by stormy sea and by carriage, Josette seemed as fresh as if she had just taken a stroll in the garden. Her chestnut hair was perfectly coiffed into a bouquet of curls. Her skin retained its warm tone of _cafe au lait_. If anything, the cold weather made her more lovely, as the frost pinched up a hint of rouge in her cheeks.

"What do you think of this frosty weather, mademoiselle?"

"It terrifies me more than a thunderstorm at sea," Josette said. "And yet, when I saw my first snowflake, it was the most exquisite thing."

Barnabas came to the columned archway that separated the parlor from the foyer. He said in English, "What a beautiful language, but not as beautiful as you are. Josette, my love, welcome to your new home."

Josette rushed into his arms to receive a warm, relaxed embrace. Angelique watched from across the room. How casually they fit together, how familiarly his arms slipped around her slender waist and made no hurry to push her away. Then Barnabas bowed into a gentle kiss, full on the mouth. They held the pose for so long that Angelique feared they would fall asleep together, standing, their faces sealed. _He dares t__o kiss her with me here watching! His cruelty knows no bounds._

When they separated at last, Josette turned calmly to her servant. "Angelique, is my room ready?"

"Oui, mademoiselle. I spent all day yesterday arranging it as I thought you would like."

No longer a friend, no longer remotely anything like a sister, Josette spoke plainly in English in the tone of a mistress of the house. "Then would you please unpack my things for me?"

"Of course." Angelique picked up Josette's hat with the lavender flowers, the spotted fur muff, the shawl, the gloves, and the drawstring purse. On her way to the stairs, she had to pass within a inch behind him. Barnabas did not so much as glance to her passing by.

Angelique trotted up the single flight of stairs to the second floor. She dashed down the corridor to the east-facing room that was chosen for the master's bride-to-be. She had arranged the things, it was true, but Barnabas had selected all of the furnishings and décor according to his own understanding of Josette's taste. For a man, he had an instinctive understanding of color palette and design. The room was the ultimate symphony of femininity. White walls were stenciled in stripes of gold. The Persian carpet was also yellow and curry gold, with a paisley pattern that complimented the lilies molded into the fireplace. Lace frills were icicles around the canopy of the four-posted bed. A white dressing table held an array of silver toiletries. A little round table by the fireplace displayed a vase of freshly cut flowers—pink camellias, the only flower that blossomed in Maine in the winter. _And what do I have? A servant's room with brick walls and a spinning wheel._

Angelique slammed Josette's gloves into the top drawer of the bureau. She hurled the hat and muff into the armoire and slapped the cabinet door shut. Growling like a cat in the rain, she stomped a circle around the little tea table. It took all her self-control to resist throwing the vase of flowers at the fireplace. She did not need mystic eyes to see in her imagination Barnabas and Josette downstairs. At this moment, Josette now savored the sweet lips that had Angelique had tasted only an hour ago.

Her wrath caused a blazing fire to surge out of the cold logs. An instant roaring blaze called into existence, without kindling, without scratching at a tinderbox, without fanning and patiently feeding the fire. _Now is the time._

Angelique rushed swiftly and silently down the stairs. She tried to ignore the sight of them kissing, but she could not help catching a glimpse of them standing quietly in each others' arms. Their faces pressed together, their eyes closed oblivious to everything else in the world.

#

In the privacy of her room, Angelique was breathless from running all the way. She rushed to her bureau and brought forth her tools from the top drawer. "Wake up little soldier. The time has come for duty. My mistress has arrived to prepare for her wedding. But there isn't going to be any wedding, is there."

Angelique sat down at the writing table. First, she balanced the wooden figurine on its feet so that it stood at attention facing her. Then she rolled the monogrammed handkerchief into a cord. Finally, she tied the handkerchief around the wooden soldier's neck.

"Now everything is ready."

Angelique pinched both ends of the kerchief. She felt the heat of power and wrath flow out of her hands, into the cloth, into the doll. She felt the spirit of Barnabas in the toy, how many happy hours as a lonely child that he had pretended it had a voice of its own.

"We'll start with just a little pressure. Just enough to make him slightly uncomfortable."

Angelique paused for breath like an archer who had just released the first arrow of a volley. Her eyes blurred with the force of her wrath radiating outward. She knew—without knowing—that it had found its mark. He might think that his cravat was tied too tightly. Josette might fiddle clumsily with the knot, but she knew nothing of undressing a man.

"The moment has come, Barnabas. I wish I could be there when you feel the pain." She gripped the kerchief and pulled each end, out to the side, tighter and tighter. "I wish I could see the look on Josette's face!"

She pulled it so tightly that her wrists trembled with the raw strength of giving everything. Not just her arms but the burning force of her will flowed into the wooden toy and into Barnabas himself from afar.

#

Angelique got the word from frantic servants that Barnabas had collapsed. It was a seizure of asphyxia that came on quite suddenly. No one knew the cause. She feigned concern and bewilderment, mirroring the mood of the Bavarian cook and the blonde scullery maids who lingered at the kitchen door. They kept out of sight of the masters, afraid to go upstairs for what they might see.

She strolled past the uncle Jeremiah Collins in the foyer. He stood at the base of the stairs, arguing with a plainly dressed older gentleman in a long brown coat. "Doctor, can't you do anything?"

"I don't know what's wrong with him," the gray-haired doctor said. "He wasn't eating and swallowed the wrong way. He certainly isn't injured. There's no fever. From what I see, there's no reason for his symptoms."

"But there must be a reason!" Jeremiah insisted. "He can't breathe."

"Aye, that's so." The doctor carried his black leather bag to the door. There he put on his wool cloak and a plain flat hat. "It's in God's hands, now."

Angelique ascended the stairs, allowing herself a gleeful spring in her step that others would misinterpret as the urgency of concern. Y_ou are doing your duty well, little__ soldier. Your endurance is formidable_.

Before she approached the door, she could hear Josette weeping loudly. Others of the family stood in the hallway as a vigil. Angelique had to control her urge to smile at the plan unfolding even more delightfully than she had imagined. Barnabas was suffering for his carelessness. Josette was learning for the first time how to cry genuine tears.

Naomi Collins, his mother, said, "I don't know why the doctor couldn't find anything wrong with him. There must be some reason for him to be choking!"

Joshua remained stoic as he regarded the oil painting of a summer landscape. "I told that ignorant Scotsman he should have tried leeches. 'A few cups worth of blood-letting is what my son needs,' did you not hear me say?"

"I heard you, Joshua," his wife answered. "But I agree with Doctor Thornton. I can't see how draining a man's blood is going to help him stop choking."

"He should have done something!" Joshua said.

Angelique entered the room. She found Josette kneeling by the bed and distraught in a way that she had never shown, even when her own mother had died. For once, all of her attention was focused on someone else's welfare.

Barnabas lay propped up on a pallet of pillows. His face had turned ashen; his lips were blue. Someone had removed his cravat and opened his collar to a V of starched wings. His hand clutched weakly at the buttons of his satin waistcoat. His lungs ached for air. He strained to suck a whistle through his closed throat, and little by little, was losing the strength to make the effort.

"What should we do!" Josette cried.

Standing calmly behind her, Angelique said, "Perhaps if you pray. Do you have your holy medal of Saint Pierre?"

"It's in my valise." Josette sprang to her feet. "I know right where it is! I'll get it. Watch over him, Angelique."

"I will, mademoiselle."

Josette ran out of the room.

Now they were alone, and Angelique stepped a little closer to him. She listened to him rasp and gargle on the back of his own tongue. This was the moment she had waited for: to see him suffer as he had made her suffer. But the longer she watched him claw at his chest, the more elusive her delight.

His pathetic wheezing for air drew her down to her knees. She reclined at the side of bed, where Josette had just been. "Do you have something to say that you think I might like to hear?"

Only his eyes turned to her. The whites were going bloodshot. His jaw pumped open and shut like a fish dying in a net.

"Let me see if I can give you some comfort." Very slowly, she wiped her fingertips across his Adam's apple. She smoothed away the sparkles of power that only she could see, brushing them off as she once asked a favor of the mosquitoes on that starry night far away. She eased the bond of the wooden soldier just enough that he could hoarsely gasp out a few words.

"Help me!"

She sighed. Those were not the words she was waiting to hear. He had not learned his lesson yet. She faked a gentle tone of comforting despair. "Everyone is trying to help you, and they have all failed. Even the doctor."

"Angelique, listen to me. I'm going to die."

His voice was not his anymore, but the wail of a ghost falling into its grave. He was not rambling like a fearful man. He spoke a simple statement—the truth known to the one who felt his life seeping away.

She sprang to her feet in panic. "Oh no, you must not die!"

He rolled his head from side to side, his eyes going blank and blind. "Death is all around me. Please, my angel, help me."

_Is he speaking to me, or have angels come into this roo__m ready to take his spirit away?_ She spun about and collided with Josette who came in the door just then bearing a tiny silver medal. Angelique did not say excuse me, but scrambled on past her.

In the corridor she picked up her skirts and ran as fast as she could. She rushed past his stunned parents and curious little sister. She galloped down the stairs, past the servants who lingered wonderingly in the shadows. More frantic by the minute, she did not stop running until she reached her own little humble room.

Her panicked fingers could not untie the knotted kerchief fast enough. _I don't remember tying it so tightly!_ The power of her fury was stronger than the power of her love for him. She dug in, prying almost hard enough to rip out her own fingernail with it. _Should I get a knife?_ At last the kerchief loosened.

She yanked it free and the wooden soldier could take a clear breath once more. "I'm sorry, little soldier. I've been foolish. I almost destroyed the only man I will ever love."

#


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Angelique ventured into the forest around Collinwood. A basket on her arm, she made the acquaintance of the unfamiliar herbs in the strange and foreign land. Dry twigs cracked beneath her shoes. Fallen leaves were brown and darker brown. Everything was rough and prickly, forbidden to touch. The trees had coarse bark. The bushes had brambles that snagged on her cloak. Even the wild fruits of raspberries and blackberries had wicked little thorns that scratched her hands when she picked them.

Eyes haunted the foreign shadows. They did not speak Creole or French; they whispered the echoes of a sort of pidgin English as a thin layer over a much older foundation. Ancient words fertilized the deeper soil that held the forgotten bones of those who spoke other languages long ago. The ghosts of men, who were neither white nor black, drifted between the trees. Men with ruddy brown skin had black hair as straight as horse tails. They wore buckskin trousers and capes of moose hide adorned with owl feathers and porcupine quills twisted into beads. The women carried straw baskets woven as intricately as crocheted lace—much superior in craftsmanship to the maple slats of the basket she carried. The old ones hunted for meat with longbows and feathered arrows. Before this place was Collinwood, it was called something else—a name known only to the dead, and the dead were not sharing the secret.

Angelique picked a path warily through the fragile underbrush of dry leaves that crumbled beneath her. Frost glistened like sugar on the black leaves. The air was incredibly cold the longer she stayed outside. When she had remarked upon the weather earlier, the governess Phyllis Wick had laughed mockingly, "It's going to get much colder than this, dearie! Why, it's only November!"

One by one, she stroked the leaves of unfamiliar herbs and politely asked its name. The tender leaves introduced themselves, _I am sage... I am rosemary... I am clover..._ She was drawn to the herbs with a darker soul and strayed off the footpath to seek them out. She crouched over to each one, bowing respect for the deadly power that slept in the underside of their leaves. _I am hemlock... I am wolfsbane... I am snakeroot... I am n__ightshade._

Returning to the house, Angelique hummed a Creole lullaby and swung the basket at her side. Spells and recipes of potions scrolled through her mind, the various concoctions that she could easily slip into Josette's tea. How sad it would be for a mysterious illness to make her face break out in warts or perhaps slimy pox that oozed green pus. She imagined Josette awakening to find her body fattened like a pig, no longer able to squeeze her bloated belly into her slender gowns. Barnabas would be repulsed, or would he? Was his infatuation so blind and foolish that he would overlook any physical fault?

"Hey you!" a man called.

Angelique stopped for the brawny servant named Ben to lumber into her path. He was one of the tallest men she had ever seen, taller by several inches than any of the Collins gentlemen who were his masters. He had broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and arms that bulged the seams of his coarsely woven sleeves. His pale face had dramatically large features—a jaw like a bear and fierce hazel eyes.

"What you got there?" he asked.

Smiling sweetly, she answered, "I've been picking herbs for supper."

He pointed with his large, sausage-like finger at her basket . "That's nightshade! That's a deadly poison, don't you know?"

"Oh!" Angelique pretended surprise. She turned her basket over and dumped the leaves out around her feet. "I had no idea, thank you! I'm from Martinique, you see, and the herbs are so different from what grows around here."

"Well, be more careful next time. If you're not sure, you can..." His squinty eyes roved downward to assess her. Angelique felt her blush rise at the intimacy of his gaze. "...you can ask me anything, missy, any time."

"Thank you, I'll keep that in mind."

They were close enough to the house that the voices of other men and the creaking of wagon wheels distracted his attention. Fear of his master's wrath clouded over his momentary daydream of desire and Ben excused himself. "I've got work to do."

He jogged off away from her, each stride a powerful slam of a fence post into the earth. Angelique watched him, a marvel, the strongest man she had ever seen—more raw muscle force than any of the ship's sailors or dock workers or slaves on the sugar plantation. Here was a man who had labored with his hands for his entire life, yet he was not the master of his own destiny.

She strolled slowly behind his footsteps.

A wagon arrived near the back of the house and parked there. Several men already had a fire going in a brick tower like a chimney with no house around it. They fanned the oven door with branches to increase the smoke. The wagon held a dead hog recently killed, still the mark of a spike driven into its forehead. The animal was as large as a man and promised enough marbled meat to last the Collins family for at least a month.

Nearby was a crude table of planks with an array of cleavers and butcher knives. White men wearing leather aprons stood by sharpening the blades on blocks of stone.

Two slender fellows heaved and tugged at the back legs of the dead hog. They strained and dug in their heels. At last, they managed to slide it off the back of the wagon. "Damnit all, that's a load of bacon!"

Ben Stokes tromped over. "Gimme room." He grabbed the rear legs, squatted himself for balance, and hauled the dead hog off the ground. Alone, he slung it up and across his shoulder like a branch full of bananas. The others marveled to watch him lugging the load across the yard.

He brought the hog to a large oak tree with a horizontal limb. There he hooked the hog's ankles to a dangling rope and let it swing off his shoulders. Hanging upside down, the hog dangled there pathetically with its blinded dead eyes and its tongue lolling out of its open mouth.

Other men came with a large tin washtub and slipped it underneath the hog's head. Ben Stokes himself, with a large knife, sliced into the carcass. Starting at the groin, he tugged the blade straight down, releasing bucketloads of dark blood that gushed into the tub and splattered the dry brown leaves on the soil. Entrails tumbled out like pale snakes.

"Careful," said one man. "Don't pierce the sausage casings."

"I'm bein' careful," Ben growled, obviously offended by the suggestion. His hands manipulated the knife expertly opening the hog's belly like a lady's silk purse. Angelique watched with fascination, from afar, as he sliced out the hog's heart and held it in his hands.

_He is strong. He has no qualms about butchery. His soul is already trapped in servitude. How easy it will be to saddle and ride a horse that is alr__eady broken. _First, she had to know his full true name.

#

Angelique went into Joshua Collins's private library, after the master had taken a journey up the hill to survey the construction of the new house. Collinwood Manor should have been completed by now, but Jeremiah Collins—in charge of the project—was "too lenient with the workers," according to his older brother. Now Joshua intended to crack the whip, literally, so that his family could move into the grander mansion by the Twelfth Night of Christmas come the new year. The plan was for Barnabas and Josette, once married, to continue living in the current house and begin work on the next generation of the Collins dynasty.

_Someday this library will be yours, my darling, and it will be filled with your books not your father's. But this house will not belong to you and Josette, no, it will be our home where we will live as husband and wife, Barnabas and Angelique forever._

She opened several heavy-bottomed desk drawers of mahogany. She pulled out ledger after ledger of accounting books, contract folios, inventory lists, property deeds, and yellowed maps of the surrounding countryside. She found a recent log of the household servants and the amount of salary paid to each one. To her disappointment, the servants were listed in abbreviations: J. Riggs, P. Wick, B. Stokes.

Frustrated, she clawed into a deeper drawer and found a metal box containing folded contracts stamped with wax seals and blue ribbons. One was titled, "Last Will and Testament of Joshua Collins." One was a marriage contract with Naomi Rousseau dit Benet—his mother, a native of Quebec. _So that is how Barnabas learned his French with a Canadian accent_. A similar paper was a marriage contract between Barnabas's uncle Jeremiah and a woman with the maiden name of Laura Stockbridge. Another paper was a disposition of personal belongings after the tragic death of Laura Collins in an accidental fire; there were no children from the marriage. So, Jeremiah was a widower who apparently felt reluctant to marry again.

At last, she found the contract of indenture which showed his full, complete name: Benjamin George Stokes. The signature of Joshua Collins was a large dark swirl of ink, grandiose and full of flourish. Ben Stokes's printed name had the mark of an "X" above it; so, he was illiterate. More powerful than a personal object that belonged to him, or a lock of hair, was the paper that made him belong to someone else. With her fingernails as tweezers, Angelique carefully ripped off a small corner of the paper. She only needed a small bit.

Footsteps lightly skipped down the corridor and approached the door. Angelique dumped the contracts into the drawer and closed it with her foot.

Sarah Collins danced into the room while reciting a little sing-song rhyme to herself. "One two, away they flew. Three four, by the door. Five six, count the bricks."

"What are you doing here?" Angelique asked.

Sarah quickly put her arms behind her back, but not before Angelique noticed she held a small leather journal. "I'm playing."

"What do you have there?" Angelique pointed at her, at an angle, aiming for whatever she hid behind her frilly pink skirts.

"Nothing."

"It's a sin before God to tell a lie, you know."

Pouting, she brought her little arms around to the front and showed Angelique the journal. "I came to put it back."

"What is it?"

"Secrets. My father's secrets. He writes down rhymes to remember them. He likes to hide a lot of things where no one will ever find them, and I..." Sarah's blue eyes twinkled with mischief. "I like to find them."

Angelique watched with fascination as the little girl crawled behind an upholstered chair. She pulled out a couple of bricks from the wall, down low, close to the floor. She replaced the journal in the hole and carefully put the bricks back into place.

"You certainly are a clever little girl."

Sarah stood up. "_Merci beaucoup_. That's French for thank you."

"I know."

Sarah skipped to the door but paused at the threshold. "Don't tell anyone I was in here. The truth is, I'm not really allowed. My father will be very angry with me."

Angelique smiled to put her at ease. "I won't tell, if you won't."

#

Back in her room in the servants quarters, Angelique mixed her brew in a mortar of coarsely glazed stoneware. She crushed the dried herbs into powder with her pestle. She added a few strands of her golden hair, and clippings of her fingernails, and pricked her finger to add a drop of blood. Finally she added the little scrap of paper from the indenture contract. Into the sweetened cream of a hot rum toddy, she sprinkled the contents of her mortar and pestle.

Sitting before the fire, she whispered to the inhuman eyes between the flames. The brightness was a gateway to places beyond the simple walls.

"Ben... Ben Stokes?" Her voice echoed beyond the reach of her throat. Like the howling winds of November, the words of her spirit traveled through the dark trees, penetrating the leafless branches, finding the path to the brawny servant.

She knew, without seeing, that he was wielding an axe and splitting firewood.

"Come to me, Benjamin George Stokes. I am calling you. Come to me."

The toddy's cream fizzled and darkened to the color of coffee, and she knew that he had heard her beckoning. Angelique strolled across the room with all the grace and somber ceremony of a priest bringing the wine to the altar at high mass. By the time she poured it into a pewter tankard, Ben Stokes knocked on her bedroom door.

"You're here!" Ben was panting with the exertion from running the whole way. "I hoped you would be."

"I'm delighted you've come to visit. You must be very cold from working outside."

"Aye, that I am."

She held forth the tankard to him. "Would you care to join me in drinking a hot toddy?"

"Thanks." Ben Stokes gulped it down in one chug-a-lug. Soon, a golden shadow of cold firelight passed over his eyes.

She removed the tankard from his limp grasp before he might drop it. "How do you feel?"

"Drunk but sober." His eyes looked about the room with wonderment as if he had never seen a spinning wheel, or a table, or a fireplace before.

"You belong to me, now, Benjamin George Stokes. Your will is no longer your own. I shall guide you through the darkness and protect you from all evil, yes, anyone who would harm you will feel my wrath. In return, you will serve me." She reached for his large hand, her own pale fingers like a child's in his broad calloused palm. "Yours is the hand I will use when mine is too small. Your arms will be my strength when mine are too weak."

"You... you..." His eyes widened with the fear of a sailor watching the approach of a storm at sea. "You're a witch."

Fury blazed in her eyes. "I don't want you to ever say that word again! Nor any other word that means the same thing. It offends me."

Ben Stokes bowed his head. "Forgive me."

"You are forgiven." She strolled away, slow and grand, with the air of command that the Countess duPres used for ordering her servants about. "Now, I need you to do two things for me. First, get a shovel and go dig up a pound of potter's clay."

"There's a potter's workshop behind the stables. I can get..."

"I said, I want freshly dug clay that no other human hands have touched! Put it from the shovel into a bucket and don't touch it yourself. Listen to my orders carefully, Ben, and follow them exactly."

He nodded with a sigh. "I'm listening."

"Next, you must find me a spider's web and take care not to break a single thread of it. Uproot an entire oak tree, if you must, but do not damage the web."

"I understand." Shoulders slumped, and seeming to lose a bit of his height, he shuffled out of the door.

Angelique sat down by the fire. She whispered from her mind's eye to the bright shadows, Prepare yourself, my friends, for I will call upon your help very soon.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Angelique fashioned the clay into a figurine about six inches tall. On one side, she pinched two little balls into breasts. She used a hat pin on the figurine's head to poke the shape of a nose and a mouth but deliberately did not make eyes; the figurine would be blind, as love was blind. On the other side of the head, she scratched out a similar mouth and nose for a face to be looking in the other direction. She fashioned lumps of clay into male genitals opposite to the female half of the figurine. As she worked, her fingers getting smudged with reddish-brown silt, she thought of the biblical commandment, thou shalt not make a graven image. She had not understood then, but now she pondered whether the dead god of the old book was a bit wiser than she had given him credit for. Names are power. Images are power. These things were a deeper older truth that the enlightened 18th century man no longer believed. _This will be your dow__nfall, Barnabas Collins—your hubris to think that you understand the world. Out of despair, you will descend into my arms, and I will teach you the mysteries of eternity._

Obtaining a lock of Josette's chestnut hair was as easy as offering to help clean her hairbrushes. Angelique had even polished the silver handle to a fine sheen before giving it back. Ben Stokes had been assigned to sneak into Jeremiah Collins's bedroom and take a strand of hair from his dressing table. Not skilled at subterfuge, Angelique had instructed him to prepare an excuse—to bring a load of fireplace logs. When Jeremiah caught him coming out of the room, ironically, he even thanked Ben for the favor.

She pressed the strands of hair, entwined, into the head of the figurine. The clay was still soft and easily accepted the new material. "You are Josette and Jeremiah. You are two molded as one. You are blind to all else but each other. You will feel incomplete until you are joined to each other."

Angelique lifted the twig that Ben Stokes had brought to her. A glorious full-circle spiderweb filled the Y-shaped hollow. Better than she could have hoped, a few carpenter ants were ensnared and bundled up in the web's strands. The ants feebly wiggled; they were still alive. It sparkled like silver silk in the firelight. And the fires in the brick hollow, from across the room, flared high.

In honor of Barnabas and his idol Shakespeare, she had researched and memorized the most exquisite incantation. "Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; so ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes."

Slowly she drew the twig downward, like a wand, and swept the cobweb over the androgynous figurine. The web's strands tangled and glued onto the figure. The dead and dying ants, by happy accident, stuck to the belly area—the core from where all life began.

Power quickened and warmed her blood. Angelique's breathing grew deeper, harder, and rougher with the effort of holding onto the figurine. She labored to hold her stare into its eyeless face and breathed her own passion into its lifeless shape.

"Josette loves Jeremiah," she panted heavily now, hardly able to gasp out the words. "Josette loves Jeremiah!"

Firelight flashed as bright as lightning. All the world for an instant became as clear as noon. Owls perching on the roof. Bats squeaking in the rafters of the barn. Josette brushing her hair. Jeremiah reading lists and inventory papers. Barnabas blowing out a candle. Ben Stokes weeping with his head in his hands. Joshua and Naomi Collins shouting an argument at each other. Sarah Collins being tucked in bed by her governess. Natalie duPres turning her Tarot cards. Andre duPres guzzling a jug of rum alone in bed. Clouds passing over the moon.

Awareness surged out to the ends of the horizon and then with the force of a boiling ocean crashed back into her. A rush of ecstasy tore through the center of her. Angelique shrieked at the blast of feverish heat. The room went dark. Quiet. She toppled out of her chair. She only awakened when the mantle's clock chimed an hour later.

#

Over the next few days, Angelique watched for signs of her magic taking effect. But she was disappointed to see no outward change in Josette or Barnabas's uncle. They continued their daily routine—Mademoiselle duPres in preparing for her wedding, and Mister Collins in supervising the construction site of the family's new mansion. At breakfast each morning, Josette hugged onto Barnabas's arm and let him playfully feed her scrambled eggs with a silver spoon like a child. After supper each night, Jeremiah took sherry in the drawing room with his older brother Joshua. The two men discussed for hours the style and color of roof shingles, and window gables, and ceiling beams to support large crystal chandeliers.

"Are you sure you haven't seen them together?" Angelique asked Ben Stokes on the fourth day. She found him in a glade, not too deep in the forest, where he was checking a wire cage rabbit trap. It was sprung but empty.

"Who?" Ben Stokes reset the rabbit trap and rose to his feet to move on to the next.

"Josette and Jeremiah, of course. Have you seen them sneak off to be alone?"

"No, why would I?" He tromped around a large tree in two steps. Angelique had to hop the large roots to come around and keep up with him.

"They're supposed to be falling in love."

Ben Stokes laughed, heartily and loudly, with the open-mouthed guffaw of a sailor in a tavern. "That's nuts! Miss Josette loves Mister Barnabas."

"Not for long."

The next trap had a snowy white rabbit caged in it. The bewildered thing twitched its pink nose. Ben Stokes picked up the cage by the handle and turned to begin the walk back to the house. "I don't like you messing with Mister Barnabas. He's been real good to me, not like his father. He promised that, after he gets married to Miss Josette, he'll buy out my indenture contract and keep me on here as a free man on decent wages."

"There isn't going to be a wedding! Not to Josette, anyway."

"Why? What's it matter to you?"

Angelique walked alongside him. Dwarfed by his bulk, she was still in command of his attention, in command of his will. "I love Barnabas and I will have him as my own."

"The way you have me?"

"No, not that way. He will choose to come to me, willingly, as soon as he gives up this silly dream of Josette."

"That'll never happen. He worships her. I ain't never seen a man so smitten."

Angelique shot him a hard, angry stare. Ben fell silent. "He won't worship her anymore, after she betrays him for another man."

"But she won't." His face screwed into a scowl of agony. "That'll be your doing."

She raised her chin with pride. "Only you will know that and you won't be able to say a word. Not one word, Ben! If you even think about starting to whisper a hint of who I am, or what I'm doing, you will go mute. Your tongue will swell up and choke you."

"I hate you," he growled.

"And yet, you will obey me?"

His throat worked, his Adam's apple bobbed, and he tried to hold back the words. It gurgled hoarsely out of him anyway. "Yes, I will obey."

#

On Sunday morning, Jeremiah went to church with Joshua, Naomi, and little Sarah. Angelique smiled to watch through the bay window at the carriage depart with the family. Jeremiah never usually went to Sunday services. Perhaps, she thought, he had something to feel guilty about; something to confess.

She wandered off through the house in search of Josette. The servants had the day off. Joshua Collins, a god fearing man, strictly enforced the blue laws—no labor on the lord's day—and his hardworking servants were only too happy to obey. Ben Stokes spent his Sundays on the back porch with the master's hounds, tossing sticks or leather balls for them to retrieve out of the snowy drifts. Phyllis Wick the governess enjoyed tea in her room and wrote a page in her personal journal; Angelique glanced in on her to say hello and thought how pathetic the woman who did not have a lover to write letters to. Natalie duPres stayed alone in her room, as well, and occupied her hours with playing the Tarot cards.

Barnabas and Josette were in the dining room but not at the table. They sat off to side, at the bay window seat, with the 12-foot high curtains like fluted columns of a Greek temple. He was reading the sonnets of Shakespeare, and Josette seated beside him seemed to be listening. Angelique lingered at the door to carefully watch Josette's mood. The young woman's big brown eyes wandered away from her betrothed. Her attention was fixed upon the window panes, or on something beyond the veneer of frosted glass.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" he recited from the little book in his hand. "Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date."

Barnabas leaned towards her, tilting himself sideways to aim for a kiss. Josette startled at him drawing near. She hopped to her feet. She stumbled a few steps before she stopped dead in the middle of the room for no reason. She stood there, her eyes as wide as a rabbit caught in a snare.

"What's wrong?" Barnabas approached her slowly from behind.

"We shouldn't..." Josette's voice trembled like her hands. "You shouldn't be so familiar. We're not married yet."

"We will be, very soon." He rested a hand on her shoulder from behind. Josette shrank away. "I don't understand. You've let me kiss you before."

"I don't know why I'm so bashful." Josette moved away from him, a little farther. She took hold of one of the large dining room chairs.

Angelique cringed back behind the door frame to keep out of sight. Unable to see them now, she could hear the strain in Josette's voice. That familiar rise in pitch and the quivering meant she was about to cry.

"Have I unknowingly done something to offend you?"

"No," Josette moaned. "You've been wonderful."

"Is it my father? Has he said something?"

"No, it's... It's something only a woman could know." Josette's skirts rustled loudly as she hurried for the door to the hallway. "I must speak with my Aunt Natalie!"

Angelique pulled back a few steps and timed her movements so that she appeared to be just approaching the door as Josette burst out of it. She bowed a slight curtsey and pretended surprise. "Mademoiselle, I did not know you were..."

"Excuse me, Angelique, I can't... I can't!" Now she was crying freely, the tears dribbling down both cheeks.

Angelique coolly stepped into the dining room and faked another gasp of surprise. "Why, Barnabas, I did not expect to find you here."

He stood there, helpless and lost in the middle of the room, a little book of poetry in his hand. "What do you think is wrong with her?"

"I'm sure it's just a young girl's nervous mood." Angelique looked about quickly for some excuse to be in the room. She opened a drawer of the breakfront cabinet, took out a few candles, and proceeded to change out the half-melted candlesticks on the dining table.

Barnabas paced the length of the table, on the opposite side, following in time step by step with Angelique's task. The broad mahogany table was a barrier between them. "Is that all, do you think? I have the feeling there's something more that's upsetting her. If not my father then perhaps my Aunt Abigail has offended her? My aunt is not very pleased that I'm marrying a Roman Catholic, to put it mildly. She imagines the Pope himself has a clandestine scheme to acquire Collinwood or some such nonsense."

Angelique finished replacing the candlesticks and so had no good reason to stay in the room with him. Barnabas did not seem to notice; he stared at the open door as if expecting Josette to return at any moment.

"Well, I may have some idea of what might be upsetting Josette."

"What is it?" He spun about so suddenly that Angelique flinched in genuine surprise.

It took her a moment to collect her thoughts, to restrain herself from climbing over the table to tumble into his arms. So fervently he gazed at her, so eager to hear what she had to say. He had not looked at her so intensely for weeks. "Well, I don't mean to be indelicate but surely you know that... well, she is... that is to say..."

"Please, tell me."

Angelique lowered her eyes and, for a moment, held her breath to force her cheeks to show a blush she did not feel. "She is as Mary was when the Angel Gabriel came to announce the good news. That is, unless you have...?"

"No, of course we haven't." Barnabas drummed his fingers on the hard-backed book that he held. "Do you think that's it? She's afraid of what will happen on our wedding night?"

"More's the pity," Angelique said, switching to French because the mood seemed to call for it, and she had not spoken French to him in months. It felt as if she had been holding her breath underwater and was just now coming up for air. "She is making the mistake of consulting with Aunt Natalie who is hardly more schooled in the arts of love than Josette herself."

He stepped a little closer to her, with his eyes wide open in an expression of pleading. "I shouldn't ask," he said, also in French, a bit halting and out of practice. His _quebecois_ accent was a bit stronger than she remembered. "But would you be willing to talk to her, as a woman, and soothe her fears?"

A laugh burst out of her; she could not hold it back. "What would you like me to say to her? Shall I tell her about those nights in Martinique when you came secretly into my room? Shall I tell her what we did there, together, in the dark?"

He quickly walked away across the broad room. He stopped facing out of the window. Snowflakes fell outside in moth-like flurries. "It's all in the past. I thought we agreed not to talk about it."

"You agreed! I never did." Angelique's laughter of a few moments ago now turned to a bitter sneer. "I can't ever forget the way you made me feel..."

"Don't say this, please."

"...and the passions you taught me to discover. You tutored me in more than English; yours was the school of love. I was a maiden pure as Josette is now. That first night in Martinique was like our wedding night. You made me a woman."

In English, he cried out, "Stop it!"

Angelique lowered her voice to a whispering murmur. She continued speaking French in case one of the nosy servants or Phyllis Wick might wander by and hear. "If she wanted you the way that I wanted you, then she would not be afraid. She would open her arms to welcome you, as I did from the first... as I would even now if you ask."

"You've said quite enough. Please leave me."

#

Alone in Josette's bedroom one afternoon, Angelique soaked a kerchief in the enchanted rosewater. She wiped clean the oval mirror on the dressing table. It was an elegant work of silver-backed glass in an ornate frame of gilded jasmine vines. As she continued to polish the glass, she whispered an incantation in pure French.

"Josette, Josette, when you look in this mirror, you will not want to be the bride of Barnabas Collins. You will not ever want to be his bride. You will recoil from his touch. You will fear him. You will reject him. Each time you look in this mirror, Josette, you will never want to be his."

Abigail Collins came to the open door. "You!"

Startled, she withdrew from wiping the mirror. She had to wonder, did Abigail know French even half as well as her nephew Barnabas?

"Do you know where my brother is?"

"Jeremiah?" she asked.

"No, I meant Joshua!" Abigail frowned her annoyance; it seemed that the spinster was always frowning.

"Oh, I believe he is in the library, Madame."

Without so much as the suggestion of a thank you, Abigail Collins hurried away. Her old-fashioned lace bonnet with long frills flapped at the shoulders of her somber dark dress. Angelique had avoided the spinster as much as possible; she was a grim, god-fearing woman who disapproved of everyone and everything. She made Joshua Collins seem jovial by comparison.

Still holding the blue ceramic jug of rosewater, Angelique sauntered through the bedroom. Her wandering gaze surveyed the various items of Josette's personal possessions and the gold-toned furnishings that were Barnabas's gifts to her. What else could she put a spell on that would sabotage the wedding plans? The bed? The fireplace? The sheet music of Mozart concertos and fugues, so that every time Josette practiced the harpsichord she would think of Jeremiah?

Heavy boot steps thudded up the stairs, followed by the clicking of Abigail Collins's hard heeled shoes. Joshua's nasal voice growled and grumbled about wasting his time.

"You'll see! When you get a look at her, you'll believe me," Abigail insisted.

They passed right by the open door to Josette's room. Joshua snorted, "Witchcraft, you say! What nonsense."

Angelique froze in place, her eyes as wide as a rabbit snared in a trap. But to her relief, the two kept going past the room and onward to the far end of the hall.

Curious now, she followed them at a discreet distance. They entered the master bedroom at the corner of the house. Naomi Collins herself, the matriarch of the family, wore a glorious house robe of dark green velvet lined with teal satin and trimmed with gold braid. Tassels dangled off the shoulders. A delicate ruffle of lace softened the neckline. Diamonds sparkled at her ears. Pearls shined at her throat. She reclined on the window seat, the frosted panes matching her porcelain skin. The ebony window frame was the same color as her luxurious pile of black hair. Naomi's soft blue eyes had a faraway, dreamy gaze. She did not react when Joshua and her sister-in-law thundered into the room.

"It's witchcraft, I tell you!" Abigail shouted. "Look at her. She's obviously under a spell."

Joshua bent over as if to kiss his wife, but did not. He lingered near to her mouth for a moment, breathing deeply, and then straightened up. "It's not witchcraft, Abigail. It's called sherry."

"What do you mean?"

"She's drunk!"

"Drunk?"Abigail repeated.

"Like an Irish sailor, and it isn't the first time." Joshua stomped to the tea table. He fingered the crystal corks of several decanters, clinking and clicking glass on glass. "She's outdone herself this time. I daresay she could hold her own with some of the Navy men at the docks."

Abigail sat down on the window seat with Naomi, her plain brown skirt a dull shadow against the rich shine of velvet. "I don't understand. Why?"

"I had a nightmare." Naomi spoke in a husky monotone. Still staring out the window, it was not clear if she spoke in response to the question or if she simply needed to say it out loud. "I saw Jeremiah walking through the house in the middle of the night. I called out to him and he didn't answer me. I followed him downstairs to the parlor. He went to the folding doors that open to the pantry. He met a woman there. I couldn't see her face, but I knew somehow that she was young and beautiful. Jeremiah embraced her. I told him not to... I felt something was wrong, but I don't know why. I saw the woman's hand across the back of his coat as she caressed him..."

"Oh please, madame," said Joshua. "Have some decorum, if you will."

"The woman's hand, it had a strange mark like a pitchfork."

Abigail gasped to hear this. "A pitchfork! The devil's mark. And a nightmare, it must have come from a servant of the devil."

Joshua grumbled, "Dreams are the imagination of a sleeping mind and no more."

Abigail insisted, "Are they? What about little Sarah? Is she dreaming when she has borne witness to wraiths stalking the hallways in the middle of the night?"

Listening outside the door, Angelique smiled secretly with understanding. _Those aren't wr__aiths; it is Josette and Jeremiah sneaking back and forth from each others' bedrooms._

"No doubt she saw servants going about their chores. And what is my daughter doing out of bed at such ungodly hours? I should have a stern talk with her governess, letting her charge run wild."

"Speaking of servants," Abigail said, her voice strong and confident and uncompromising. "I have seen some of them able to sort the labels on barrels or parcel packages. Servants who were illiterate before, now suddenly able to read! Can you explain that, Joshua?"

Joshua stomped his heel so hard that Angelique could feel the vibration in the hallway. "That isn't witchcraft either! It's called an education. The devil himself is my son Barnabas."

"The devil is no joking matter," Abigail said, her tone becoming shrill.

"Barnabas fancies himself a modern day Pygmalion who can bring any stone-headed statue to life. I have seen him on several occasions inflicting lessons on the staff. He gets them to write their alphabet, and before you can say Jack Sprat, he's transforming them into gentlemen scholars. Last winter, he had poor Riggs suffering through Homer's _Odyssey_. I believe they got as far as Circe's island, where the men were all being turned into pigs, when the fellow gave up. Who is his victim this year? Oh never mind; I don't care to know."

Abigail insisted, "You must admit there is a pall of wickedness and evil that has descended upon this house. I've corresponded with a minister in Salem and he agrees with me that witchcraft is running rampant here at Collinwood. There are fell omens that foreshadow doom, whether you choose to ignore them or not!"

Joshua started for the door. Angelique had nowhere to hide, so she pretended to use her rosewater kerchief to polish the hallway table.

"Abigail, if you don't stop babbling on about such nonsense, I will bar you from the wedding ceremony."

"You can't...!"

"I can and I will, if you don't keep your tongue in your head. We're at the dawn of the 19th century after all. This isn't the Salem witch trials of a hundred years ago. I will not have the ranting of some fanatic Puritan repeated in my home. Is that clear, little sister?"

"A day will come," Abigail said. "When the face of evil stares back at you, and you won't be able to deny that its source is Satan."

"If that day comes, you have my permission to gloat, 'I told you so,' but until then..." Joshua gripped the door frame as he straddled the threshold. "Not another word from you about witchcraft!'

#


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The following Thursday, a week before Christmas Eve, a rehearsal was scheduled at the village church. The entire Collins family packed themselves into several carriages.

Relatives had recently arrived from out of town. Millicent Collins, a simple-minded eighteen, behaved with the blushing naivete of a girl half her age. Recently orphaned, she was the heiress to an estate in New York of sizable acreage. Joshua hoped that Jeremiah would marry his cousin Millicent and thus keep her inherited property all in the family. The difference in their ages—and the fact that Jeremiah did not feel romantically attracted to Millicent—did not seem to matter when Joshua thought of his accounting books.

Daniel Collins her younger brother was already a dashing and mature gentleman at eleven. He saw his rightful place in the men's carriage with Jeremiah and Barnabas rather than ride with his cousin Sarah who was near his own age.

"I'm taking lessons in fencing," Daniel bragged to the older gentlemen, as he climbed into the carriage. "I go into New York City twice a week to attend the academy by special invitation. My instructor says I'm very talented. Are you skilled with the short sword, cousin? Would you care for some friendly sparring during my visit?"

Jeremiah answered for both of them, "Perhaps another time, Daniel. This is not the right season to be brandishing weapons even in fun."

Fat-rumped black horses brought the caravan of carriages down the hill. Angelique being a servant rode with Ben Stokes, John Riggs, Phyllis Wick, and several others in an open wagon pulled by an ox. The air was biting cold. Angelique's furious eyes fixed on the rear window of Josette's warm and cozy carriage the whole way. Frost stung her heated cheeks.

Saint Sebastian's Episcopal Church of Collinsport was a boxy rectangular building. Its bricks were dark red, and the shingles on its steep roof were black. The steps leading up to the front door had a railing of wrought-iron spikes. It had narrow stained glass windows, a square-sided tower and a steeple with a tarnished brass bell. Every day, the bell rang three times: at dawn, at noon, and at sunset. Its mournful clang could be heard on clear days as far as the Collins mansion on the hill.

The structure reminded Angelique of the little village church in Martinique but with a touch more elegance. For the first time in a long time, she was homesick for the sunny beaches and the warm grasses that were green all year round. The landscape here was all a faded palette of blue, and gray, and dirty white. She could not remember her hands being warm.

She entered church behind the family, even behind the other servants. Cautiously, she strolled up the center aisle between rows and rows of mahogany pews. She searched for hidden spirits but saw none in the arched ceiling, the ribs of pine painted yellow in aspiring to be Heaven's golden gates. Tall wooden poles supported racks of blue candles. The altar was chiseled out of bone-colored marble imported from a place called Tuscany, as Barnabas explained to Josette with his arm around her waist.

Above the altar was a massive cross and on it mounted the life-sized figure of Jesus Christ nailed by his hands and his feet, a slim cloth draped across his hips, and his head crowned with thorns. Barnabas pointed out the gigantic crucifix with admiration for its craftsmanship. He launched into a monologue about the artist's biography and how the Collins family had sponsored the gift to the church. "It's an exquisite work of art, don't you think so, Josette?"

Josette turned her head, as if to admire the cross, but instead wound up staring sideways at Jeremiah.

"Reverend Jennings," said Joshua Collins to the man who emerged from a small door at the side of the altar.

Angelique would have called him a priest for his long black cassock that buttoned from chin to toes and for the narrow white collar around his neck. Yet he was called a reverend, not a priest, and the Collinses were Episcopalian not Catholic. She had learned by now that the Americans had a different word for everything. _A rose by any other name_, she thought Barnabas might say.

"Hello, welcome everyone," said the reverend, a rather young fellow with boyish features. Sloppy locks of corn blonde hair, parted in the middle, hung down either side of his face. "Barnabas, I haven't had the opportunity yet to say congratulations."

"Thank you, reverend." Barnabas shook his hand, too. "This is Josette."

She dipped her knees in a curtsey. "It is my pleasure."

"Delighted to meet you. I'm sure you'll make Barnabas very happy." As the reverend looked at her, Josette turned aside with a bashful blush. Jeremiah likewise shifted on his feet and pretended to be very interested in an oil painting of Saint Francis holding a sparrow on his finger.

Joshua Collins prompted, "Well, then, shall we get started with the rehearsal?"

"Yes, indeed." Reverend Jennings stretched out his arms to begin directing the family in their roles. "Mister Collins, you and your wife will be seated here on the groom's side. You, sir, I assume are the bride's father? Would you escort her to the rear of the church and prepare to walk her down the aisle?"

Andre duPres took Josette by the hand. Her head bowed in modesty—or perhaps shame—as she strolled with him into the brown shadows beneath the choir loft.

"I assume I am to be here?" Countess duPres glided into the pew on the opposite side of the aisle from the groom's family. Angelique dutifully tended to the trailing train of the grand lady's skirts, tucking the layers of satin and ruffles into the walled-up bench.

"Yes, that's fine. Now, the best man is..."

Sarah piped up proudly, "I'm a flower girl. I'm going to have a basket full of rose petals, but I don't have it today."

Her young cousin Daniel Collins boasted, "I'm the ring bearer. That's a far more important job than littering the floor with flower petals." At eleven years old, he wore a tailcoat, a satin waistcoat, and white breeches. A bleached cravat bloomed under his chin. In every way he was a miniature version of the fully grown gentlemen, and he had the prideful pose to match.

"You're a mean boy!" Sarah cried. "I don't like you. I like David better."

"Who's David? Do you have suitors already?"

Joshua Collins rose out of his pew, a bit slowly and stiffly; the gout was troubling his leg today. "Sarah, come and sit down."

Phyllis Wick pinched the little girl's ear and fairly dragged her off to the side. The governess hissed a stern whisper, "No more lies about that imaginary friend David, or you know what I'll do."

Sarah plunked herself into a pew, crossed her arms, and sulked.

Cousin Millicent shyly stepped forward. Although she was a lady of means equal to Josette in wealth and privilege, she conducted herself as timidly as a servant. Blonde and fair-skinned, she had delicate features of a porcelain figurine. Always she wore gloves for fear of touching something that would make her sick. Even now, she clutched a handkerchief to her nose and spoke through the thick wad of linen.

"I've prepared a song." Millicent paused to sneeze. "I'm going to sing the Ave Maria. Shall I perform it now, as part of the rehearsal?"

Barnabas replied, "You should save your voice for the wedding."

"If you say so, cousin." Sneezing again, she settled down in the pew behind Joshua and Naomi.

Reverend Jennings cleared his throat. By now, he had ascended to the lower step of the altar. He held a small prayer book in his hands. "Now, the best man will stand here. I assume that's you, Jeremiah?"

"I suppose so," he mumbled.

Barnabas laughed softly. "If that's an attempt at levity, you're failing miserably."

"I'm sorry." Jeremiah turned to gaze at his nephew with heartfelt sincerity. His large brown eyes moistened and crinkled at the corners.

"For what?" Barnabas sobered quickly. He put a hand on his uncle's shoulder. "What's the matter? You seem distressed about something."

"This isn't the time or place."

"I insist," Barnabas said. "Tell me."

Angelique's hopes surged that here, in the house of God, the guilt would overwhelm Jeremiah and he would be moved to confess. She glanced to the rear of the church. Josette visibly gripped her father's arm.

"Well, I've been trying to find a good time... But the thing is, well... That is... I don't think I'll be able to make it to the wedding."

Barnabas cried out, "What? Why?"

"I have to go away," Jeremiah stammered. "I have to leave town... leave Maine... leave the country... on urgent business."

"What business?" Joshua Collins asked from the pew. "It's the first I'm hearing about it."

Natalie duPres slowly turned her head left and right, her eyes passing from Jeremiah at the altar to Josette beneath the choir loft. Angelique saw nothing of surprise in the countess's expression; if anything, she seemed to be biting her lip to hold back blurting out what she knew. Of course, she reasoned, Josette's aunt knew everything. An aristocrat who had no doubt caused a few scandals in her younger days flirting with aristocrats in the gardens of Fontainebleau, the countess had discovered and then expertly concealed their love affair.

"It's a, uh, private venture," Jeremiah mumbled.

Barnabas commanded him, "Delay your trip until after the wedding."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can, and you will." Barnabas gripped him by both shoulders and seemed about to shake him. "You're my best man! You're supposed to stand at my side when I marry the love of my life, and stand here you shall. If you choose to make a business venture a priority then I will never forgive you."

Jeremiah's forehead squeezed down, pinching his eyes into narrow slits. It seemed he was genuinely about to cry. "All right, Barnabas, I'll stay for your sake. Please believe me, no matter what I do that may appear contrary, you mean the world to me."

"I know." Barnabas clapped him a few times on the shoulder and, reluctantly, let him go.

Reverend Jennings said, "Now, may we continue? First, the music will cue the flower girl. Yes, that's you. Then comes the ring bearer, Mister Daniel Collins. And finally, the bride."

Angelique's mouth hung open in amazement as she watched the procession continue. Could nothing be done to stop this farce? Andre duPres with his tubby waddling gait, a serious expression as he brought his only daughter—his only legitimate daughter—to the altar. He stood tall before the crucified figure of Jesus Christ himself and pretended to have no sin. Josette hung onto him, her feet dragging with the weight of her own guilt, but she let herself be brought along. Her hand trembled as Andre lifted her wrist and placed her delicate brown fingers into Barnabas's hand. The onyx ring glistened darkly as the groom took hold of her.

Reverend Jennings said, "I'll recite a passage of scripture. You'll say your vows, then you may kiss..."

Josette clapped her hand over her own mouth as she spun away. "Not yet!"

"It's only rehearsal." Barnabas gently took hold of her elbow to pry her hand off her face. "I won't kiss you now."

Jeremiah took out a kerchief to dab at the sweat beads on his forehead. The church was cool, though, despite the many large candles that flickered. Angelique understood why he was sweating. _Incredible, why doesn't Jeremiah confess? Or why doesn't he run away with her? Why are these Collins men so stupid and unpredictable? Why do they deny their pa__ssions that burn in their hearts?_

A flash of sunlight pierced a bead of stained glass. Angelique called out to the brilliance, with the voice of her mind, _Come to me... Stop this madness... Come and burn..._ That slender pole of light from the stained glass window fixed upon a spot on the carpet. It started a small curl of smoke that spread into a circle of orange and yellow sparkles. Flames grew into feathers. Fire quickly sprouted from the carpet to the curtains. Gaining strength the fire lapped at the wooden support posts and the paneling on the walls.

"Fire!" cried Aunt Abigail.

Flames licked the base of a life-sized statue of Saint Sebastian—a nude man bound to a tree and shot full of arrows, dying but not dead yet. The statue was carved out of flesh colored wood, sanded and polished smooth, and painted in lifelike color. His hair had a cinnamon tinge. His eyes were blue. The blood was bright red that streamed out of his multiple arrow piercings.

Sarah screamed a shrill note as she froze in place, staring at the bright flames spreading up to the choir loft. Young Daniel grabbed her hand and said, "Don't be scared. Come on."

Joshua and his brother coolly herded the group down the aisle. Jeremiah managed either by chance or by design to get close to Josette. He put his arm around her shoulders and said to her, while appearing to say to the rest, "It's going to be all right."

Barnabas asked the reverend, "Is anyone backstage?"

"What... 'backstage,' did you say?"

Waving his hand at the door beside the altar, Barnabas cried out, "There! That dressing room, whatever you call it. Are you alone?"

"Yes, it's Thursday. I'm the only one here."

Ben Stokes called to Riggs and the other servants as they hurried out the main door. "Let's find shovels. We'll scoop up snow to fight the fire."

Outside in the church yard, Angelique huddled in the cold shadows with the rest of the women and the two children. Young Daniel objected, "I can help!" but was ordered by Joshua Collins to stay out of the way. They stood by and watched the gentlemen and their servants, all equal in the efforts. Their silhouettes were obscured in the billows of smoke and the bright flame. Every man cooperated with buckets and snow shovels, rushing in and out of the burning church. Angelique's eyes widened in the pleasure of watching it burn—the spirits of fire and shadow dancing out of her control.

It took the better part of an hour before the men had extinguished the last of the flames. By then, the sun had started to set. The western sky absorbed the fiery hues that had just been smothered in shovel-loads of snow. The church's stained glass windows were dark and some had cracked. Smoke puffed out of the door.

"Witchcraft," said Abigail Collins so sternly that she had Cousin Millicent and even the countess nodding in agreement. "Who else but Satan would wish to destroy a church?"

"Yes," agreed Ben Stokes in a low voice, hoarse and rasping from the smoke. He stared straight at Angelique as he repeated, "Who else?"

She glared a warning at him. _Not one wor__d about me, Ben. You will not be able to utter so much as a hint of what I have done, or what I plan to do. Your tongue will choke you before you can point me out as a witch._

Men doubled over from the smoke. They coughed and wiped their faces with cotton kerchiefs or silk cravats; rich and poor; master and servant; soot-faced all the same. Josette rushed up to Barnabas and Jeremiah, standing side by side. She cried out to either or both of them, "Are you all right?"

"Yes." Barnabas embraced her first as Jeremiah looked on sadly. "But whatever shall we do? The building is saved, but the interior is utterly ruined."

Angelique bit down to hide her smile of triumph. _The wedding will be postponed into the new year!_ But her joyous moment was short-lived.

Joshua Collins, leaning on his walking cane, announced, "We shall host the wedding at our home. Reverend, is that all right with you?"

"Of course, sir. I'd be honored." The reverend gagged on smoke and bent over coughing. Angelique wished that she had thought ahead to slip him a potion like the one she had tricked Ben Stokes into drinking. _If I eliminate the priest_, she thought, but quickly changed her strategy. _But no, these resourceful Collinses will only send for another from a nearby town, or from Boston or__ New York. They seem determined to make this ridiculous wedding go forward! I must increase my pressure on Josette; my last hopes are on her!_

#

Despite all her efforts, the wedding day arrived in the following week. Reverend Jennings on his brown horse trotted through a light sprinkling of snow. Joshua Collins made him welcome with a pot full of hot coffee. Guests assembled in the downstairs parlor. Naomi in her satin gown and jewels sat like a queen. Abigail in a simple beige frock clutched a King James bible to her chest. Cousin Millicent played an Ave Marie on the harpsichord. Her pipey voice sang the whole thing through in Latin, twice. Sarah sitting on the loveseat by the window raked her fingers through the basket full of rose petals.

Young Daniel attached himself to Lieutenant Nathan Forbes in full dress Navy uniform. The boy asked eagerly if he had ever battled pirates at sea, or if Nathan had ever killed a man with the saber he wore. The lieutenant replied to each question briefly while staring sideways at Millicent's blonde curls. Angelique sensed a darker soul of greed and ambition in the soldier's pretty blue eyes. But as long as he did not interfere with her own designs, Nathan's stalking of the naïve heiress was not her concern.

Barnabas fidgeted on his feet. "Where is she? Why is she taking so long?"

At his side, Jeremiah only stared at the floor. He wore his best velvet tailcoat of sienna brown with a black collar and cuffs embroidered in lily leaves. His dark green satin waistcoat had a smooth sheen like a calm deep ocean. His crisp white cravat was like an orchid blooming on a summer's day. Only Angelique understood the misery in Jeremiah's heart, the reason he had not yet taken a glass of sherry to hand and had not raised a toast to Barnabas and Josette's happiness. But his misery was not enough to halt this farce. Barnabas in his very best tailored suit, and wearing the jeweled medallion of the family crest, was fully expecting to go through with this.

"There's a storm on the way," the reverend said gently. "I'd like to be on the road before dark."

"Of course you would," Barnabas replied in an apologetic tone. "I'm sure she'll be down any moment."

Angelique offered, "I'll go and see what's delaying her!" Hoisting her skirts, she trotted upstairs to Josette's room.

As she approached the bedroom door, she hoped to find Josette in a tantrum refusing to marry him. She lingered unnoticed at the door frame to peer inside.

White satin skirts in tiered layers spread out from Josette's slender hips in a tapered cone that puddled out in a pale shadow behind her. White lace hung like orchid petals at her wrists. Satin piping stiffened the seams of her bodice. Whalebones hardened a cream-on-ivory brocade panel into a flat inverted triangle. The veil was a luxurious curtain of Spanish lace that carried the musty scent of cedar chips and generations past although it had been aired for weeks out of its trunk.

Natalie duPres stood between Josette and the dressing table mirror. By chance, she blocked the young bride's view of the enchanted glass. The grand lady pinched and picked at the gown's frills. All the while, as she nattered on—in French—a constant monologue of advice. "...day you've waited for, and hoped for, and all the foolishness will be put aside now."

"I'm not sure I can," Josette said.

"You can and you must. These aren't the days of the Parisian court when it was accepted for a woman to be married in name to one man and find her pleasures with another. You are in the New World now. These Americans will not tolerate such _bourgeois_ behavior."

As Angelique entered the room, she made sure to click her heels on the floor so that it seemed she had just now arrived. "Oh mademoiselle, you are the most beautiful bride I have ever seen! Look at yourself in the mirror and think of how Barnabas will rejoice to see you."

Josette glanced to the gilded mirror. The enchantment shined its whisper, _You will not want to be the bride of Barnabas Collins. You will not ever want to be his bride. You will recoil from__ his touch._

A frown soured her face. Her large brown eyes moistened and flickered in the candlelight. "Barnabas will... rejoice to see me?"

The countess put an arm around her niece and firmly guided her toward the door. "Enough of dragging your feet. No doubt they've sent Angelique up to see what's keeping you so late! It's time, now, my dear to go downstairs and get married to the man you love."

"The man I love," Josette repeated dully as if in a dream.

Angelique stood blocking the doorway even as the bride and her spinster maid of honor approached. She felt herself standing in a nightmare, unable to move her legs.

"Wait, please, mademoiselle." Angelique reached into the pocket of her skirt for her very last, desperate spell. She carried a small square of blue cloth, the size of a kerchief, that she had sliced out of Jeremiah's bed sheets. By watching the two lovers through the eyes of the flames, she knew they had not yet fully consummated their affair but they had come very close. Secretly meeting in each others' bedrooms in the middle of the night, or outside in the frosty garden beneath the statue of Diana the Huntress, they had wasted hours in gulping tongues and groping each others' bodies. Jeremiah had reached down her bodice and up her skirts, but only with his hands. When they returned to their own beds, alone, Josette wept for shame into her pillow, and Jeremiah thrashed about in the agony of frustrated desire. _You can't live without Josette as your wife_, Angelique had chanted to the cloth earlier that afternoon as she had stitched its hem with a needle pricked in her own blood. _You were married once before, Jeremiah Collins, and lost your beloved Laura in a fire. You dread going on as a widower for the rest of your life. You want a bride. You want __a wife. You want a lover. You want Josette._

"What is it, Angelique?" Josette asked.

"I have made you a gift." She brought out the blue cloth twisted and styled into a rosette. "Would you do me the honor of wearing this on your gown?"

Josette frowned at the crude flower of cloth. "It doesn't match."

"Oh please, mademoiselle! I have nothing else of worth to give you. You have so many lovely and expensive gifts that I could never hope to equal. Please understand that this is from my heart. I feel that we are like sisters, you and I, in spirit if not in reality."

Natalie duPres was moved to tears and dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief. Perhaps she also knew the secret of Angelique's parentage, if her brother Andre in a drunken stupor had confessed his guilt; the word sister seemed to pierce into the countess's heart. "Josette, don't be so cruel. Allow her to give you this one small token."

"Very well." Josette continued to frown as Angelique pinned the blue florette onto the waistline of her white wedding gown.

"Thank you, Angelique," said the countess. "That was very thoughtful of you."

"I am always thinking of mademoiselle's happiness."

Josette drew back, her legs tangled and trampling on the gown's long sweeping skirt. She put one hand to her belly and the other to her forehead. "Oh, Aunt Natalie!"

"What is it?" The countess grasped the young woman by the shoulders and helped guide her into the puffy upholstered loveseat.

"I feel faint. I need air. Please, open the window!"

"It's freezing outside," the countess objected.

"Unlock it!" Josette shrieked. "Open it!"

"All right, just a little crack."

Josette with eyes closed and mouth open panted heavily like a woman running uphill. Her cheeks flushed bright rose.

Angelique stepped into the corridor. From downstairs, she heard the men's booming voices rising to something of argument. Barnabas called out, "Where are you going?" but she could not make out the words of Jeremiah's awkward, mumbling reply. She bit down on her urge to laugh out loud; finally, it was working.

"Leave me alone, please," Josette said.

"Why?"

"I want a few minutes to... to pray. Please, Aunt Natalie! Go downstairs and wait for me."

Her face puckered in confusion but the grand countess obeyed the young woman's wishes. In a sweep of salmon-colored silk, she departed the room and joined Angelique in the corridor. Angelique herself closed the door to give Josette her privacy. _To pray_, she thought with a giggle bubbling at the back of her throat.

Downstairs they went to join the wedding party now thrown into disarray and confusion. Jeremiah had departed with no explanation. Barnabas paced back and forth at the fireplace like a caged fox. Abigail was muttering to Reverend Jennings about witchcraft and he seemed to be ignoring her. Naomi Collins loitered near the crystal decanters of port and sherry.

Lieutenant Nathan Forbes had abandoned his conversation with young Daniel. Now the Navy officer slouched an elbow over the harpsichord to smile and flirt with Millicent. The naïve maiden blushed awkwardly at whatever he might be saying.

Joshua Collins ordered Ben Stokes, "Go and ask Jeremiah to get himself back here immediately!"

"Yes sir." Ben Stokes cast a suspicious glance upstairs, in Angelique's direction, but soon was forced to turn away and swallow the lump swelling up at the back of his throat. Shoulders slumped, head hung low, he lumbered off toward the rear of the house.

Andre duPres met his sister at the base of the stairs. "Well? Where is she? What's taking so long?"

"She's almost ready," the countess announced.

"'Almost'? What does that mean?"

"She is dressed in her wedding gown." The countess sauntered through the columned archway and into the parlor. Everyone's attention turned to her. "She has asked for a few minutes to pray."

Barnabas gripped the mantle as he stared down into the blazing fire. Angelique trembled to restrain her urge to rush across the room and throw herself into his arms. He craved a woman's devotion, and here she was ready to give it to him. If only he would turn around!

She gazed into the flames. Everyone else in the room talked among themselves, yammering and quietly arguing. Their mixed cacophony of voices covered Angelique murmuring to the flames, "Eyes of fire, show me what is unseen."

In the orange-brown gaps between the rising flames, Angelique saw the ghostly dolls play out a puppet show for her eyes alone. Jeremiah had saddled a large gray horse from the stables. He walked the animal, tugging it by the bridle, following the wagon path that encircled the house. In his other hand he carried with him a long wooden ladder. He halted beneath the upstairs window.

Josette leaned over the window sill like a fairy tale princess locked in a tower. Jeremiah placed the ladder against the house. He held the rungs steady, bracing the ladder with his own strong legs planted in the chilled black dirt. Josette in a swirl of white skirts climbed out, and inch by inch, her dainty feet brought her down the ladder and falling happily into his arms. Jeremiah kissed her deeply, hurriedly, and had to stop kissing in order to boost her onto the horse. She sat sideways, her long white gown streaming over the horse's left shoulder. She still wore her veil. As Jeremiah mounted up and wrapped his arms around her, he crushed the lace like a moth's cocoon.

He galloped through the snow. He and Josette ducked the low hanging branches. The broad hooves kicked back scoops of white powder. They galloped faster and faster, on an eastward course, bound for the town of Collinsport, bound for the shore of the sea.

Andre duPres stomped upstairs. He knocked on the bedroom door. "Josette? It's almost nine o'clock. Josette, the minister is getting very impatient. Josette?"

Angelique put a hand over her own mouth, pretending concern along with the rest of them, but it was all she could do to hold down her grinning glee. She stifled a wild cackle of ecstasy. Jeremiah had surrendered to his desires, at last. Before this night would end, Josette would be the wife of Jeremiah Collins and she would share his wedding bed. Barnabas would grieve at the betrayal and sulk among his books, and Angelique would gently approach to comfort him.

After a pause, the father of the bride rushed downstairs to announce with a shout, "She's gone!"

#

Angelique passed the long cold night, alone in her cold bed, waiting for him to come to her. He never did. She slept and hoped to dream of him, but her mind wandered to other places. Other times. She dreamed of the ancient ones who dwelled in this place before the white men came: the proud men with black hair as long as horse tails, and women with faces wrinkled by wisdom. They hunted the moose on frozen ponds and gave secret names to the seasons of the moon. They told stories of the world as an island floating on the back of a giant sea turtle. As she walked through their midst as a dream spirit, they also saw her. _You do not belong here_, they said. _You walk a __crooked path. Your feet are backwards. You breathe of the ill winds. We watch you, and laugh. We turn away from you, and wee__p._

She awoke alone, drenched in sweat and shivering at the chill of the air. How she missed the warmth of Martinique and the welcoming _loa_ of the jungle. Everything in this land was chilly and forbidding—even the spirits. Enough moonlight shined through the window that she could read the little clock on the mantle: half past four.

She rose out of bed and wrapped herself in her blankets. She stood shivering by the window. Men's voices called out to the twilight before dawn, _Josette where are you? _Their torches darted like fireflies among the ancient trees.

"Why don't you give up?" Angelique's breath made a lace of fog on the window glass. "You won't find her in the forest, you must realize that by now. Come home, my darling. Surrender to your despair and out of the dark abyss of your pain, I will rescue you."

#


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Angelique sought out Ben Stokes on the bright, clear morning. She found him nearby in the woods between the family home and the new house under construction up the hill. The large man swung a long-handled axe to chop logs into firewood. Whack, the sound clapped an echo like a lightning strike. Angelique approached him from the side, giving a wide clearing so as not to startle him while he had an axe in his hands.

"Ugh… you," he grunted. The next swing of the axe came down with greater force. "I figger you must be pretty pleased with yourself."

Angelique sat down on a large fallen tree. Thick layers of skirts and wool cloak made a cushion against the oak's rough bark and the chill of frost in the crevasses. She looked to the east. A cold and distant colorless sun shined pale through the leafless black trees.

He asked, "Have you come to force me to help you bury the bodies?"

"Josette is not dead," she told him. "She and Jeremiah are happily married."

"Even worse."

"They spent their wedding night in the Collinsport Inn. She belongs to him, now." Angelique spoke wistfully to the blue shadows beneath the trees, to the uncaring, unseeing eyes of spirits who had dwelled in this forest long ago before there were white men. The spirits of the old ones saw her too, and they turned their shirtless backs to her.

"But you haven't won." Ben Stokes chuckled as he tossed a few fireplace logs into the wheelbarrow. "You don't have what you want. Mister Barnabas isn't yours."

"He will be, when he learns the news of their betrayal. His heart will break, and I will be there to mend it."

Ben chopped into another log. The wood screamed as it split; the tree still remembered being felled. "He'll kill her, and the blood will be on your hands."

She laughed a merry, chirping cackle. "Don't be silly! Barnabas doesn't have a violent bone in his body."

"Any man can turn into a killer if you push him hard enough."

Ben Stokes raised the axe and carefully crept toward her. His boots were sinking into the soft powder soundlessly. As she faced the morning sun, he did not cast a shadow. Yet she knew of his approach and his intent. She could see the whole scene from the viewpoint of a crow in the tree above. Outside of herself, saw the golden haired woman sitting on a log and the brawny servant sneaking toward her with an upraised axe.

A flick of her wrist, and the axe yanked out of his hands. It twirled in the air,_ whoop whoop_, and thudded into a trunk.

She rose to her feet, calmly, and brushed the flakes of ice from her cloak. She gave him just a roll of the eyes before she strolled away. He stood there, his shoulders hunched, his arms limp at his sides.

#

Returning to the house, she found Barnabas asleep in the chair by the fire. He still wore the same clothes from the night before—his best wedding coat and silk cravat. His boots were slathered with pale mud. He sagged sideways in the chair, his cheek resting against the upholstery. Bruise-colored hollows darkened the pouches under his eyes, weary and pathetic.

Angelique knelt at his feet. She put a log into the smoldering ashes and gently fanned the sparks to resuscitate the dying fire.

His arm draped off the side of the chair. Even asleep, he kept hold of the stained and torn wedding veil that he had found last night discarded in the forest.

Moving behind his chair, Angelique soothed and stroked his forehead. Softly her fingers combed out the locks of his thick hair.

Dozing, he whispered in his sleep, "Don't leave me."

Angelique so kindly bent over and inhaled deeply of him. A faint aroma of soap and lavender water was overpowered by the woodsy scent of the forest where he had been tromping about for most of the night. He carried in his scalp the traces of pine and oak, of dry leaves and ice, of the winds of darkness.

Kissing the top of his head, tasting his hair, she murmured, "I won't ever leave you, _mon cheri_."

Barnabas snapped awake. "Angelique! Don't touch me."

She stroked the back of his chair. "I'm only trying to comfort you."

He launched to his feet. In a few quick broad strides, he crossed to the bay window. There he stood, still holding the ragged and soiled wedding veil. He stared forlornly out the glass panes. "It's morning. The skies are clear. I can resume the search."

"Why bother?" Angelique said. "You know you won't find her in the forest."

"No, I probably won't. But I can't give up! Where could she be?"

"She has betrayed you." Angelique approached him from behind, reaching out to the empty air that spanned between them. "She has run away with her lover, Jeremiah."

He sucked up a sharp breath. "Her aunt has made such insinuations as well. She tells me, now, that Josette was confused before the wedding, but she kept it a secret because she'd assumed that Josette had made her decision. I refuse to believe a word of it. Even if it were possible that I misjudged Josette's affections, my uncle… Jeremiah is the closest thing to an older brother that I've ever known. He would never… never..."

"I don't presume to know a man's heart." She inched a little closer, side-stepping around the small lamp table that held an ornate silver candelabra and half a dozen twinkling blue candles. "But perhaps Jeremiah has been secretly jealous of you."

"Jealous?" he repeated.

"Yes, have you not observed his interest in designing and building the new mansion on the hill? Knowing full well that you will inherit this place, this 'old house' as he has come to call it recently. Think of it, Barnabas, when your father passes on—and being so much older, he will no doubt reach the end of his days before Jeremiah will—then the younger brother will inherit the grand mansion. Will he live there alone? No, he desires to regain what he lost so tragically when his first wife Laura died."

"How did you hear about that?"

"Oh, I must have heard someone mention it." Angelique shrugged off the lie to change the subject back to the poisonous seeds she was planting in his mind. "Jeremiah clearly has ambitions for becoming the master of the largest estate in the province of Maine, to have a beautiful wife at his side, to father the next generation of Collinses to carry on the family business. He has concealed his greed all these years. He has fooled you! Like a second-tail dog fighting to be leader of the pack, he will push you aside. You will be the runt of the litter, if he has his way."

"You have no evidence for what you're saying. Jeremiah and I are equal partners in the family business."

Angelique came nearer and stood alongside the maroon curtains. She was close enough to touch his sleeve. Yet she withheld a little longer. "Last night, did he not say that he wanted to leave town to attend to some business venture? What was that about?"

"I don't know."

"He was not happy at your wedding. If he loves you like a brother, he should have been proud and overjoyed. Why was he not?"

"Stop it, please. You're just saying these things because you're the one who is jealous."

Now she rested her hand on his arm. He allowed the touch. "I'm only thinking of you. Whether you believe it or not, my only concern is your well-being."

Outside, there was the sound of horse hooves clopping and the rattle of a buggy's wheels on the slush and gravel. Barnabas rubbed his sleeve cuff against the window pane to clear the frost. He peered outside. "Who could that be?"

Barnabas started for the foyer at the same time his father came from upstairs. All three went outside with Angelique trailing in their wake. They crossed the slate flagstones of the porch and passed through the towering Grecian columns. Down the broad steps, they came to stand in the semi-circular gravel carriage road.

A black buggy for two arrived, pulled by a pair of brown horses with white fetlocks. The coachman, in a plain wool coat and a simple felt hat, did not get down from his bench. He held the reins as if ready to crack the whip and be off as soon as his passengers disembarked.

The little door opened. Jeremiah emerged first, still dressed in the fine long coat he had worn the night before. His cravat was tied a bit sloppily and off center. He had a slumped posture of defeat and dread like a man ascending to the gallows.

Barnabas asked, "Where have you been?"

Joshua Collins, leaning on his walking cane, scolded his younger brother, "We've all been frantic for the whole night long. You'd best have a good explanation for this irresponsible disappearance."

"I do… I have… That is, we have…" Jeremiah avoided looking at either of them. With his head cast down, he reached to the buggy's oval door.

The hand of a lady emerged. By the velvet glove and dainty cuff of lace sleeve, Angelique knew her at once.

Barnabas gasped, "Josette! You found Josette!"

She emerged from the coach, holding Jeremiah's hand for balance. Her skirts swooshed out and settled down into a cone. It was a newly purchased dress in the plain style chintz to be found in the shops in Collinsport. A smart-looking tailored suit coat flared over a single layer gathered skirt. Her hat was a tiny velvet canoe holding a bouquet of silk florettes.

Barnabas stepped towards her, reaching out his arms to his beloved. Josette cringed away and squeezed into Jeremiah's embrace. The sight of it stopped Barnabas dead in his tracks. He gawked at them standing so close as if glued together down the middle.

"I'm so… so sorry," Jeremiah mumbled with his arm around her. Josette's cheek rested on his shoulder. "We got married last night."

"Married!" Joshua exclaimed. "Did you say 'married'?"

"Yes."

Barnabas stood there, his mouth open, numb, unable to speak. Josette turned her face into the lapel of Jeremiah's coat to avoid the staring eyes, the shocked faces.

Joshua sputtered in outrage, "How did this happen? Why?"

"We've, uh, been feeling… this way for a while, but we tried to fight it. Last night, it was too much. We couldn't fight it anymore." Jeremiah finally raised his shameful gaze and looked straight at his nephew. "I'm sorry. I tried to tell you so many times, but I didn't have the courage."

Barnabas exhaled a long slow sigh, his breath in vapors like tobacco smoke.

"We didn't want it to be this way. It just, well, it just… just happened." Jeremiah waited for a reaction. No sound came from anyone except the caw of a raven in the birch trees. "Barnabas, please say something. I'll understand if you're angry."

Barnabas reached under his coat to his belt. He pulled out a pair of lambskin gloves. He swung his whole arm, backhanded, and slapped the gloves across Jeremiah's cheek.

"A duel, sir!" he shouted into his uncle's face. "Tonight, at sunset, you will meet me on the field of honor."

Jeremiah slouched forward in acceptance. "At sunset it is, then."

#

Hardly had the challenge been issued than Joshua Collins grabbed his son by the coat lapels, and dragged him half-staggering into the house. He hurled him stumbling into the parlor. If he were a younger boy, Barnabas would have fallen to the floor.

Joshua fumed at him, "Have you completely lost your senses?" in the tone of a man ready to give his naughty son a spanking.

"This is my affair, father. Stay out of it!" Barnabas had a powerful voice when he chose to use it. His roar blasted the walls, resounding in the boards. Angelique in the foyer thrilled to the booming thunder of his rage.

"I will not! He is my brother. Whatever quarrel you may have with him..."

"Quarrel? What an inadequate word." Barnabas paced wildly around the room. He pawed at the upholstered chairs. He kicked the legs of the straight-backed desk chair. "That son of a bitch has raped by betrothed!"

"You'll settle this like gentlemen."

"We are, father. We are."

Joshua Collins tapped the floor sharply with his walking stick. "I will not have this nonsense in my house. Do you hear me, son?"

Barnabas seized a handful of the curtains. He flung the fabric into a wide, flaring billows for no reason at all. "We don't plan to do it in the house."

Josette exploded into the house like a wind storm. "Aunt Natalie!" she screamed, gathering her skirts in her arms and galloping up the stairs.

The gentleman Jeremiah lingered on the threshold but did not come in. He gestured to Angelique, while the father and son continued to shout at each other in the parlor. She crossed the foyer and came near to him, the only one who would.

"Tell him," Jeremiah began, and then hesitated. His brown eyes moistened with sorrow and guilt and most of all confusion.

"Yes?" she prompted.

"Tell him that I'll be up at the new house. I need to be sure if the workers are properly installing the Franklin stove in the kitchen. I'll probably be there for most of the day." Jeremiah looked past her left shoulder to the empty stairway where Josette had gone. Then he looked over her right shoulder to the parlor where the two men continued to shout, talking rapidly on top of each other so that they did not even hear themselves anymore. "Sunset comes early these days. Tell him that I'll be back around, let's say, the hour of five o' clock to make our appointment."

She curtseyed a bow. "I'll tell him, sir."

After Jeremiah had gone, Barnabas launched out of the parlor. He stomped into the dark hallway and bellowed, "Ben! Ben Stokes, where are you!"

Joshua leaning on his walking cane, limped after him—the gout in his bad knee acting up even worse today. "Don't you turn your back on me, son."

Barnabas half turned to shoot him a stare of pure fury. "May I be excused, father?" he said with a sneer of sarcasm.

"I forbid you to carry on with this absurd duel. Do you hear me? I forbid it."

The two were silent for a long moment as they stared at each other. Angelique held her breath, waiting for one of them to speak. Barnabas's dark eyes glistened in the firelight like the old ones in her dream. His eyes widened as he made a slow survey of his father from head to toe.

"Until now," Barnabas said. "I never realized what a pathetic, bitter man you are. You never loved my mother. You've never known a love worth fighting for... worth dying for..."

"Worth killing for?" Joshua added.

Barnabas whirled about and stomped away down the hall, shouting, "Ben! Ben Stokes! Come to me, I need you."

Angelique fingered the ruffled frill at her collar. This was not at all what she expected. Barnabas was not heart-broken, he was a thunderstorm of rage and wrath. He was in no mood to be consoled or embraced.

"You there, girl."

She flinched to find Joshua Collins so close at her shoulder. His mousey little eyes fixed into hers. "Yes sir?"

"Go and brew a pot of coffee. Make it strong." Joshua hobbled past her and started up the stairs. He paused to wince each time his right knee had to bend. "Bring it to the master bedroom. Let's get his besotted mother on her feet and see if Naomi can talk some sense into that pig-headed boy of hers."

"Yes sir."

#

Naomi Collins spent half an hour in Barnabas's bedroom, pleading, crying, and sometimes shouting at her son. "Can't you find it in your heart to forgive him? He is your uncle!"

The floor boards creaked as he paced the room, back and forth, from his library shelf to the window overlooking the carriage road.

"No more," Barnabas growled. "He is my uncle no more. He is a stranger to me."

Naomi fled the room, sobbing and not bothering to wipe the tears that twinkled on her cheeks. She pushed past Angelique standing in the hallway and hardly seemed to notice her there.

From farther down the hall, Angelique could hear Josette in her room wailing and screaming as Natalie duPres tried to talk to her. "Why did you do it?" she asked in French, but got no answer.

_Why doesn't he hate her_, Angelique wondered. _She's the one who betrayed him. Why is all his fury concentrated on Jeremiah?_

"Witchcraft!" Aunt Abigail walked down the hallway and passed behind Angelique. "It must be witchcraft that made her turn against him."

"Miss Collins," said Angelique, trotting after the woman's plain dark skirts. "Perhaps if you try talking to Barnabas about this duel?"

"He's beyond talk. He is possessed of the devil and under a spell of murderous rage."

She sighed through a weak smile and pretended to agree. "Of course, that's obvious." What else could she say? Of all the spells she had wrought since coming to this house, Barnabas's rage was entirely of his own doing.

Abigail carried a folded envelope in her hands. "I'm writing a letter to my friend in Salem. He'll know what to do!"

"Who?" Angelique followed her to the top of the stairs.

"Reverend Trask will help us. He knows about these things. It must be a plot against Jeremiah... Perhaps he made an enemy of some heathen in his travels. It's all a witch's evil scheme to destroy us all."

As Abigail made her way down the stairs, the front door blew open on a gust of winter wind. Angelique shivered at the wave of frosty air that splashed over her.

Lieutenant Nathan Forbes strolled inside. His full-length cape billowed around his tall physique, his crisp blue and white uniform with shiny brass buttons. He saw her immediately. From the base of the stairs he turned on his predatory, charming smile. "Well, hello again, Miss Bouchard. May I say, you are looking particularly-"

"Not her," Ben Stokes grumbled, entering behind the Navy man.

"Oh?" Nathan revolved to make a quick observation of the burly servant's scowl. "Oh, I see. My apologies, Ben. You sly ol' dog, you."

Ben started up the stairs. "This way, lieutenant. Mister Barnabas is waiting."

Angelique curtseyed aside and let the Navy man saunter past her. Even though he assumed her to be involved with Ben Stokes, he still let his blue eyes flash an appraisal of her. He winked a promise as if to say, _Anytime you're bored with him, sweetheart, I'll be available._

She waited for the two men to enter Barnabas's room and close the door. Then she cautiously crept back down the length of the hallway. She put her ear to the frame and listened.

"What do you need pistols for?" Nathan asked.

"I'm fighting a duel this evening."

Nathan laughed merrily. "A duel? No, no, you're serious?"

Various objects rattled and clicked, metallic and heavy by the sound of them. Pistols! Angelique put a hand to her throat. She had hoped for rapiers or sabers; they were easier to control. A musket ball was too small to see and flew too fast. She would not be able to catch it with her sights so easily.

"Jeremiah eloped with my Josette last night," Barnabas said in a low, quiet grumble.

"The scumbag! I hope you blow the shit out of him."

More clicking and clattering of metal parts on a wooden table. "Thank you for bringing the pistols, Nathan. My father won't lend me any of his collection."

"Can't say I blame him," Nathan said. "It's his brother, after all, but then... What's between a man and a man is nobody else's business."

"Exactly."

Ben Stokes said, "Mister Barnabas, if I could say something? Maybe what they did, well... That is, maybe it's not all their own fault."

"Not their fault!" Barnabas blasted at him. "How do you reach that conclusion? Did pirates kidnap them and force them at the point of a cutlass? No! My so-called best man left me standing at the altar. He saddled a horse. He sneaked around the back of my house. He put a ladder to her bedroom window and stole my bride from me. How is any of that 'not his fault', Ben?"

"I'm trying to tell you, Mister Barnabas. Maybe you should talk to your, ah... Ah..." Angelique heard the name of Abigail choke up in his throat. She imagined his piggish eyes squinting shut, and his large jaw chewing at the air to struggle to form words that would not come. And she smiled with a tilt of her eyebrow. _You can't utter the slightest hint about me, Ben, not even in a roundabout way._

"I'm done talking," Barnabas said. "There's nothing that anyone can say to change my mind. At sunset, I will face that son of a bitch with a pistol in my hand, and I will have my satisfaction."

"Whoa!" Nathan's boots clomped hard and fast on the floor boards. "Don't pour in so much gunpowder or you'll blow your damned fingers off. Christ! Let me help you lock 'n load them. Have you ever handled a pistol before?"

"Of course I have," Barnabas answered with a lilt of indignation. "When I've sailed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, I've carried pistols to guard against buccaneers."

"Have you ever actually fired one at someone, not in practice?"

Barnabas walked away to the window. Angelique felt the rhythm of his gait in the creak of the floor boards. His body moved farther away from her. "Well, no... Actually, we were quite lucky. The occasion never presented itself."

"You've never killed a man?" Nathan asked.

"No."

"Damn." Nathan whistled a long slow note. "I didn't know. Thought you had."

"Will you still help me or not?"

"Sure I will, if that's what you want."

"It is."

Ben Stokes said, "Mister Barnabas, can I beg you once more? I wish you'd take a few hours, or a day or two, to cool off."

"Thank you bringing Lieutenant Forbes to me. Now, that will be all, Ben."

"But Mister Barnabas..."

"I said, that will be all."

Angelique skipped away from the door as she felt Ben's weighty lumbering steps creak the floor boards. She ducked into Abigail's room—that she knew to be empty—and waited for the servant to shuffle past in defeat.

There in the dark of the spinster's room, Angelique resolved to weave her most complicated spell yet. She had not been able to protect Josette's mother from death, but she would protect Barnabas before it was too late. If she failed and he went to the grave, she would never dare to raise him up again. She had learned her lesson with zombies! She needed a powerful spell that would thwart the scissors of the wicked blind sisters of Fate, to deflect the scythe of the Grim Reaper, or _Le Diable_, or whatever guise the Angel of Death might use to prey upon her beloved. She would concoct a brew of hellish ingredients and enchant a charm that no man should have the right to wear. She would give Barnabas Collins the ultimate power to ward off death itself.

#


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Angelique spent the rest of the day prowling about the grounds in search of her brew's ingredients. She went down into the basement to find a spider that carried its egg sack, ready to hatch a brood. _Comp__ė__ Anansi, be clever for me_. She climbed up to the attic and seized a fragile little bat asleep upside down. _You who fly blind in the dark and yet can see_. She dug into the hollow of an oak tree's roots and scooped up the larvae of a cicada. _Longest-lived of all insects, you sleep underground until the time is right to emerge_. She boiled a little copper kettle in the privacy of her own room. Throughout the hours she added to her brew a spoonful of apple vinegar and hog's blood, a mandrake root and a rabbit's foot, a corn snake's cast-off skin, and a silver coin. By squeezing an onion into her eyes, she drew out her own tears.

When the brew was finished and started to bubble black, Angelique dipped in the monogrammed kerchief that she had used in another spell to choke him. The silky fabric still carried the memory of what it had done, how it had almost squeezed the life out of him, and how by releasing its knot Barnabas was saved. The fabric stained in the brew and turned color from white to a deep teal.

"Now, little soldier," she said to the wooden figurine, taking it out of her bureau drawer. "You have a very important mission. You must not fail!"

She carried the kerchief and the wooden soldier upstairs, being careful not to be seen. Through a small narrow door, up a tunnel of very narrow stairs, up she went to the top of the house. She had been there once before, hours ago, to fetch a sleeping bat. Now she ascended with a purpose to find the best place to weave the spell of her life... and Barnabas's life.

In the attic, she measured out her paces between the east-facing and west-facing windows. She found the exact center between the mercurial patches of cold sun. Always on the move was the sun. She used a stick of chalk, a tack, and a string to draw a perfect circle. She sprinkled salt granules around the chalk line. She set up beeswax candles that had never been burned. She made the wooden soldier stand in the center; it had peg joints at the hips and shoulders so it could either sit or stand. She ripped the kerchief in half, draping one half on the soldier's chest like a knight's shield.

"What are you doing?" asked a young boy.

Angelique startled and turned to see the shaggy blonde hair of Daniel Collins ascending up from the hatch in the floor. Behind him emerged his cousin Sarah in her lacy white bonnet and her pale turquoise dress.

"I'm, uh, playing a game."

Daniel in his miniature gentleman's suit put a hand to his hip. He critically surveyed her arrangement of the wooden soldier and the circle of salt and candles. "What sort of game is that?"

"I'm doing it for Barnabas," she said. "He seems so unhappy today. I thought that if I could remind him of happier times, when he was a child, that he wouldn't be so angry at his uncle."

Sarah sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

Daniel spun about to scold her, "Don't you start crying again. You're a Collins, and we don't cry for anything."

The sun was sinking lower to the forest-covered hills. There was, at most, an hour until sunset. Angelique had no time to waste with the children. She had to risk continuing her spell right there, with them at her side. "This toy used to belong to Monsieur Barnabas when he was a boy about your age. He used to play 'fort' and 'regiment' and I so very much want to set it up just right for him."

Daniel laughed at her and plunked himself down cross-legged on the floor boards. "You're such a girl. That's not how you set up a fort."

"Oh, it isn't? Would you show me?"

"Sure."

Daniel scooted sideways. He threw open the lid of a toy chest that he apparently knew was there. He unloaded some whittled sticks with notched ends, tall cups for casting dice, lacrosse rackets, and a set of wooden pegs with flattened bases.

"Now, to build a proper fort," he began. "You need to prepare for what sort of assault you intend to withstand. Is it to be wild Indians or pirates with cannons?"

"Perhaps both."

"As you say." Daniel used the dice cups to make four towers, at equal distance around the circle, and then hooked the notched ends of sticks to build a wall connecting them. Angelique watched and marveled with amazement at the youth's intuitive grasp of magic—to combine the geometry of sacred shapes, a square and a circle; to position the towers at the four compass points; to use the raw elements of wood and light and air. In hardly a few minutes, he constructed a fine sturdy wall around the standing wooden soldier.

"Now, these are your sentries." Daniel set up the flat-bottomed pegs on the cup towers. "They're from the game called Devil Amongst the Tailors or bar skittles. Nathan Forbes took me to The Eagle, you know, that tavern on the docks? He showed me how to play darts, and cards, and skittles. So when I saw these in the toy chest, I knew right away..."

Sarah reached into the toy chest. "I don't want to play fort. I want to play ball."

"Well, I don't," Daniel said. "Only babies play ball."

"I'm not a baby!" she cried out.

"You're acting like one."

Sarah crossed her arms and turned away to face the western window. All the sky was starting to fade from blue to gray. The clouds had a faint sheen of yellow on the undersides of their meringue vapors.

"I'm sad," the girl said. "I don't like it when Barnabas hurts people."

Angelique looked up sharply. "When has Barnabas ever hurt someone?"

"He made Mother cry, and he made Josette cry, and now he's going to hurt Uncle Jeremiah. If someone doesn't stop him, he's going to go on hurting more and more people." Sarah sniffed again. Her voice became softer, faint, almost an echo of herself. In that pale dress, in the dimming light of the late afternoon, she seemed translucent against the darker hollows of the attic's corners.

"Don't be afraid," Angelique said to the girl. "Everything's going to be fine."

"No it won't. It won't ever be fine. I keep having bad dreams."

Daniel rolled his eyes and confided in Angelique, "I don't understand her silly games of dreaming about things that can never happen. Imaginary friends locked in the basement. A woman who is a doctor! And nobody's going to wrap a coffin in chains."

_A coffin wrapped in chains! _Thinking back to a nightmare that Barnabas once had, in Martinique, she looked to the girl with a new appraisal of Sarah's unfocused awareness. Not quite power. Not yet confident enough to reach out and speak to the spirits of the forest. Sarah definitely had a luminosity about her soul, a candle in a dark room that had yet to be ignited. Abigail was no threat with her ignorant talk of witchcraft, but Sarah's eyes were pure and true seeing more than others could see.

"What did you dream about your brother, Sarah?" she asked.

"Barnabas keeps hurting people. I keep chasing after him, but I can't find him. When I almost catch him, it's too late. He's mean. He's always angry. I'm afraid for all my friends. In my dreams, he wants to hurt my special grown-up friend who sings 'London Bridge' with me. I tell him not to be wicked, and he doesn't listen to me." Sarah whimpered and covered her face with her hands. "Why doesn't he listen to me?"

"Because," Daniel said. "You're a stupid little girl with stupid imaginary friends."

"Am not!" Sarah stomped her foot. The floor board creaked and the wooden pegs in the fort jiggled. "I'm not playing with you anymore."

"Fine." Out of a cedar chest, Daniel unfolded a man's cravat. The fabric was faded and yellowed with the years. He carefully encircled the whole fort with the long band, outside the perimeter of salt and the walls of wooden sticks. "Now, we have a moat. All it needs is a crocodile, or better yet, a dragon to guard it. Do you know where we can get a dragon?"

There was no time to draw one on paper or conjure a figure out of potter's clay. Yet she knew that Daniel was right about the fort needing a totem guardian; he had an instinct for this sort of thing. With the proper training, he could become a fine warlock.

Angelique looked instead to the little girl. "Sarah, can you imagine a dragon for us?"

"I don't like dragons. They're scary."

Daniel just laughed at her. "Girls!"

Angelique kept serious, looking to the girl with earnest hope. "Please, Sarah? The war is about to start. The enemy is going to fire..." She paused, thinking of a musket ball fired out of Jeremiah's pistol. "The little soldier needs to be protected from cannon balls."

A new mood of childish understanding came over Sarah. In her sulking reluctance, she moved forward. The frilly lace hem of her gown swept a faint trail in the dust.

"It's for Barnabas, isn't it," Sarah said, not a question but a statement of fact.

"Yes."

Daniel flapped his hands across his knees in exasperation. "She already said it was! Are you deaf or stupid or something?"

Sarah fixed a steady stare into Angelique's face, their pale eyes locked in a gaze of knowing and starting to know.

"Will it protect Uncle Jeremiah too?" she asked.

"Perhaps," Angelique whispered, not daring to tell a lie to that face.

Dust flakes swirled in the air that Sarah had stirred. The low angle of the sun cast a heavy beam sideways. A plank of brilliance, sparkling with the golden particles, twinkled all around Sarah and each one knew her—the soil and the air of this place where she was born. If the ancient spirits in the trees did not accept Angelique as an interloper, they seemed to embrace little Sarah; she was a fish and this was her native sea.

"Can it be a pretty dragon? Can it be pink?"

"Of course it can." Angelique smiled.

Sarah looked down at the fort and her expression went somber in concentration. "It's pink and gold. Instead of fire, it breathes out rainbow sparkles."

"That sounds wonderful," Angelique said. "Now, the soldier is safe."

The colors of the sky deepened in hue. Sunset approached. Her heart fluttered with the dread of what was about to happen.

"Sunset," the little girl said in a dreamy monotone. She gazed to the window panes turning from pumpkin to rouge. "Bad things are going to happen after sunset."

Angelique rose to her feet. "Would you mind if I take you downstairs, now, children? It's almost supper time. Mister Collins will be very angry if you're late to table."

Sarah whirled about for the stairs. "Father! I can almost hear him calling."

Daniel followed her at a leisurely stroll. He asked over his shoulder, on the way down, "Can I come back tomorrow and play with the fort?"

"Of course," Angelique said, her hand on his collar for guidance to be sure that he left the attic behind. On her descent, she glanced back as her eyeline came down level with the floor. She saw the translucent figure of a fat pink dragon, with golden spikes on its back, prowling the silk moat around the fort of wooden sticks. It arched its neck and let out a silent roar. Its fiery breath was a stream of rainbow sprinkles.

#

After saying good-bye to Daniel and Sarah at the dining room, she carried the other half of the torn kerchief to Barnabas. It needed to be put on him to complete the connection.

She caught up with him in the foyer at the base of the stairs. He was preparing to leave the house and meet Jeremiah at the dueling place.

"Barnabas, would you wear this?"

"Why?"

"As a token from me. Did not the knights of the Round Table wear the scarves of their ladies before they went into the... What was it called?"

"Joust," he said grimly. "I'd rather not be distracted with such silliness."

"I'm not being silly." With her fingertips, she pressed the corner of the kerchief through an empty button hole. A few quick tugs, and he had a crude corsage. "I want you to know that I understand how you feel. Your heart is broken by Josette, just as you have broken mine."

He closed his eyes. "Angelique, I never meant to..."

"I know you never meant to ruin me and toss me aside, but you did. Now Josette has done the same to you. I want this kerchief to remind you that we are bound together—you and I—in a communion of suffering. When you go to face your rival, remember you are not facing him alone. My prayers are with you."

"I don't believe in prayer."

"Then, believe in my love." Angelique raised herself on her toes and smacked a quick, soft kiss to his cheek.

"I'm not sure I believe in that, either, or if I ever will again."

He stepped away quickly, avoiding her gaze. He swirled his long cape around himself, billowing like the black wings of a burned angel as he launched out the door. A flurry of snowflakes turned to pink and gold in the setting sun.

#


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Sunset bloomed at the western horizon. The sun itself was buried in swags of a thick mist that covered all of Collinwood, but the sun's light illuminated the heavy fog. Light was everywhere, and nowhere, an ambient glow without direction. People cast no shadows.

The two men stood back to back, arms crossed over their chests, flintlock pistols in their hands.

Barnabas paid no attention to the setting of the sun or the subtle transition from daytime into night. His thoughts were wholly absorbed into the cold flintlock pistol in his hand and how the moisture of the fog might dampen the gunpowder. The pistol had its shortcomings; even though he would aim carefully and hold his arm steady, the lead ball whizzing out of the smooth barrel had a tendency to spin off in wild directions. At any distance greater than twenty paces, he could not be certain of hitting his target.

"You will each take ten paces," said Lieutenant Nathan Forbes acting as moderator. "Then turn, and fire."

Barnabas started first. His boots softly crushed the ice-glazed fallen leaves. Angelique hiding in the trees watched him through the branches. She peered closely at his stony visage, wondering if he had any last regrets. He showed no fear... and no hope. _Foolish man,_ she thought. _Is Josette worth this price? Why can't you toss her away as you so easily rejected me? Why don't you ask her to be just friends?_ He wore the charm that she had given him. He was in no mortal danger, but he did not know that. At this moment, he was prepared to die.

The men stopped and turned. They raised their pistols at each other. From her vantage point, Angelique could see clearly that Jeremiah aimed away from his nephew. Despite the power of the spell that caused him to crave Josette, he bore no malice. In the end, he conducted himself with honor.

Their thumbs rotated the ornate brass hammers. Two little metallic clicks. A brief pause. They squeezed the triggers. Sparks sprayed out of the barrels in sprinkles of fiery raindrops. Smoke puffed out of the barrels.

The little lead ball from Jeremiah's gun ripped into an ancient oak. Bark chipped.

Barnabas remained standing.

Jeremiah's legs folded beneath him. He collapsed to the ground and sprawled on his back. No wounds showed on his body. His suit remained perfectly buttoned. Only his face was a mess of blood. The left side of his cheek had cracked like an egg dropped to the floor.

Josette screamed a loud, sustained wail.

Angelique smiled with thrill. Her charm had worked. Barnabas was safe. From behind, she admired her lover standing there with a smoking pistol hanging limp at his side. He was so majestic and terribly wonderful like a God of Death in his black waistcoat and broad shoulders radiating strength. Her legs felt weak, dazzled by his power of destruction. If it were possible, she desired him even more.

"You monster! You madman!" Josette hurled herself to lay over the bleeding man. "You killed him, the only man I ever loved!"

#

All that night, Jeremiah Collins languished dying in his own bed. His skull was a bloody pulp that soaked the bandages and drenched his pillow. Doctor Thornton came at Joshua's bidding to work his craft for the better part of an hour before he emerged from the room and wiped his bloody hands on a rag. "I've sutured the wound as best I can, but I'm sorry to say the skull is cracked open. The musket ball entered through his left eye socket, and..."

Naomi swooned at her husband's side, but it was Ben Stokes—not her husband Joshua—who caught her from hitting the floor. The burly servant swept her up in the cradle of his arms. In a swirl of golden satin, he carried her off to her own bed.

"His left eye, you say?" Aunt Abigail leaned in closer to the doctor like a confidante.

"Yes, madame," the doctor said.

"The left side is the devil's hand." Her brown eyes were dark against her pale face, eerie and half lit by the candles in the hallway. "There is sorcery at work here. Evil... witchcraft..."

"Enough, woman!" Joshua blasted. "Go to your room."

Abigail drifted away down the hall toward her bedroom door, more of her own volition than at her brother's order. "I must pray for deliverance. 'Now as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...'"

"Pray," Josette repeated, half swooning herself against her aunt Natalie's shoulder. "Yes, I must pray for him. My husband... my love... Why is this happening?"

Natalie duPres guided her into Jeremiah's bedroom. Together, the two women pulled straight-backed chairs with cushions of floral needlepoint. They sat vigil at his bedside. They made the sign of the cross in unison—touching forehead, heart, right shoulder, left shoulder. Angelique watched them through the open door's frame. A sentiment almost close to pity flickered in the depth of her heart. _I never intended for this to happen. I had no quarrel with Jeremiah—he never did any wrong to me. I only wanted him to run away with you, and be happy somewhere else, so that I could have Barnabas__ to myself._

"Liar!" Sarah squealed, running along the hallway towards Jeremiah's bedroom door.

Joshua held out his walking cane as a barrier. "Stop. Don't come any closer."

Phyllis Wick the nursemaid dashed on the little girl's heels. She swooped in from behind, caught her around the waist, and held her wriggling in place. "I'm sorry, sir, she just got away from me."

"You lied," Sarah cried with a fierce, accusing stare to Angelique. "You said the soldier in the fort would keep him safe."

Joshua Collins straightened his posture suddenly as if a flagpole had just been rammed up his spine. "What in the blazes are you talking about? What soldier? What fort? Oh, never mind. Miss Wick, take my daughter to her room and keep her there. Tie her to the bedpost, if you must, but restrain her at all costs."

"Yes sir."

"No, no, I want to see him." Sarah wriggled and kicked at Phyllis's long skirts, to no avail. The humorless woman dragged the little girl away. Together they tumbled into the nursery room. Phyllis slammed the door. There followed the loud click of a key being turned in the lock.

Joshua turned on his heel. He stomped down the hallway in the opposite direction. As no one else was around, Angelique drifted quietly behind his shadow.

He hurled open the door to Barnabas's bedroom and took a commanding stand just inside. "Well, son, have you anything to say for yourself?"

Barnabas sat in his reading chair. On the little lamp table he had disassembled the pistol into all its intricate parts. He used a steel wand and greasy rag to meticulously, unhurriedly, clean and wipe the barrel and trigger mechanisms.

"What would you have me say, father?"

Incredulous, mouth open, he took a few hesitant steps closer. "Have you no regrets at all?"

"You've always taught me to never tell a lie." Barnabas held the pistol up to the candlelight to inspect its condition. "Therefore, I must say, I do not regret what has happened. I did what was necessary."

Joshua rapped his cane on the hardwood floor. His hand trembled as if restraining himself from using it to beat some sense into his son. "Your uncle is dying."

"I expect that's so." Barnabas calmly laid the pistol into its wooden carrying box lined with a cushioned pad of magenta velvet.

"There isn't much time. If there's anything you wish to say to him..."

Barnabas interrupted, "I have nothing to say to him."

Joshua gawked down at him, speechless, but then a very old wisdom clouded over his small eyes. Angelique recalled that he had been a soldier in the war of the revolution. Twenty years ago, he had marched in bleeding boots through winter snows at a place called Valley Forge. He had followed the orders shouted by General George Washington himself. No doubt he had seen scores of men bloodied and shot, stabbed and crushed, or caused their gruesome deaths by his own hand. Grief crinkled his brow. He must have thought those days were behind him.

"Did you enjoy it?" Joshua asked in a hush close to a whisper.

"What?"

"Pulling the trigger... Killing a man... Wielding the power of God over life and death?"

Barnabas slowly closed the lid of the pistol's carrying case. He stared at his own hands resting on the wooden lid. "No, I didn't enjoy it. I expected to feel some sort of satisfaction but I am nothing but hollow."

Joshua nodded along, the worry lines in his forehead easing back just a bit. "Well, there's that consolation at least."

"How do you mean?" Barnabas looked up at him for the first time.

"You're a killer," his father explained to him. "But you're not a murderer."

#

Angelique had to wait for hours to find an excuse to go to Barnabas's room. She brought him a supper tray from the kitchen. A rum toddy in a pewter tankard was still warm, the sweet liquor of the Caribbean blended with the wafting aroma of cream, honey, cinnamon and cloves. The white ceramic platter was heaped full of a holiday feast that no one had yet eaten: a slice of smoked ham with maple glaze and a spoonful of spicy mustard, boiled purple potatoes, a yellow corn cob, green peas, and cubes of winter squash. The Bavarian cook had reminded her that it was Christmas Eve this night. The kitchen staff had churned a whole tub of butter for the Collins family.

"I'm not hungry," Barnabas said as she entered. "Please leave me alone."

He stood by the window, as he so often did these days, staring at the frosted glass. Night had darkened the outside and so the glass was more of a mirror than a window. His own indistinct reflection frowned back at him—two faces staring morosely at each other, the human face and the dark opposite.

"Are you sure that you want to be alone? Tonight is Christmas Eve, after all."

Angelique set the tray on the little lamp table and on top of the flat wooden case that stored the dueling pistols. Not wanting to seem too eager, she kept her back to him. He was in a fragile mood. She fussed with the plate's garnish of mint leaf, a vivid contrast to the yellow mustard and slice of pink ham. How easy it would be to put a spell on it, just a little one, just a whisper of a suggestion to nudge him in the right direction. _No_, she scolded herself. _He must come to me because he chooses to, or I will never be certain of his devotion._

"I forgot it's Christmastime," he said. "The damned calendar has marched on without me. Aunt Abigail made a holly wreath. She makes one every year. Since I was twelve, it has always been my job to hang it on the door."

"Shall I ask Ben to do it for you?" Angelique bent over the hearth to place another log into the smoldering orange coals.

Candles flickered. Shadows shifted. Wind rushed. Barnabas swooped in on her from behind.

Angelique gasped happy surprise as his strong hands seized her by the shoulders and spun her about. He gobbled her mouth in a hard, crushing kiss that smashed her teeth. His arms like iron chains squeezed the breath out of her. She swayed and half swooned in his clutches. She offered her tongue and he sucked it so fiercely that she feared he might swallow it down.

Their passion rushed up to the edge of the cliff, but before they leaped over to the point of no return, Barnabas pulled his mouth away. Yet he did not release the tight grip of his embrace. He panted hard into her face like a hound drowning in the sea and paddling for shore. Angelique moaned, "_Mon cher_," pressing herself against his yearning. She gazed into his dark eyes—blurry for being so close to her own—and understood his desperate hunger, his need to release the overwhelming rage and grief.

Somehow he managed a shred of self control. He glanced aside to the closed door. A very thin piece of wood, indeed. If they were to give in to passions now, it would not be quiet or discreet. It would be a hurricane force tearing off the roof. Angelique understood his hesitation. His mother's room was across the hall; his uncle lay dying two doors down.

"My room," she whispered. "I should go first, and you follow… soon."

Mouth open and panting dry, he answered in a wordless grunt, "Uh-huh."

Angelique forced herself to let go of him. Her legs quivered. The core of her body was on fire and she could hardly walk. Somehow she managed to stagger to the door. It hardly needed mentioning but she said it anyway, "I'll be waiting."

#

In her room, she folded down the blankets and lit a few candles. She unfastened her dress but kept it draped loosely at her shoulders because he always enjoyed removing her clothes. She sat down on the bed. She held onto the knob of the bed frame's post and waited for him. At last, he would come to her freely, willingly, and they would make love in wild abandon as they did in Martinique. Tonight, she would make him forget about Josette. She would soothe his pain, and sleep in his arms, and awaken to a new brighter day.

Feverish with anticipation, she listened to the silence of the hallway outside her door. She waited, and waited, for more than an hour.

The clock chimed all twelve times. Midnight.

_Where is he?_ She stood up but thought better of going back upstairs to his bedroom. She could not risk someone noticing her sneak around at such an hour.

Going to the fireplace, she added a few twigs of kindling to the smoldering log and raised the feathery threads of flame. "Eyes of fire, show me what I cannot see."

In the blur of a hot and hazy dream, she saw into his room as viewed from the candelabra affixed to the ceiling. Barnabas was still there, and he was not alone.

His little sister Sarah sat crying by the fireplace. Barnabas brought a load of blankets and knelt to swaddle her up in a nest of knitted flowers and quilted paisley.

Then he sat down cross-legged on the rug. He spoke to her sobbing face. Angelique could not hear what they said. She could only see the little girl's blue eyes turning red and dripping with tears. Her dainty hands squeezed up the blankets in her shaky fists. Barnabas offered her a kerchief to wipe her cheeks. She slapped his hand aside.

Whatever he said next seemed to anger her further. Sarah punched his chest with her fists. She flailed at him with her thin little arms. Barnabas made no move to defend himself. He bowed his head forward and allowed her to keep hitting him, on the shoulder and on the upper arm, until she ran out of strength.

The little girl slumped over the hearth stone. Wrapping her arms over her head, her slender shoulders convulsed as she continued sobbing. Barnabas simply sat there, not raising a hand to touch her, not moving, not speaking. All the rage and passion drained out of him.

Angelique reeled out of her all-seeing trance. She blinked her eyes a few times to readjust herself to the humble room that she called her own. Little Sarah was a formidable power indeed, an intuitive force of innocence and conscience._ I almost thought we could be allies, you and I, after I won Barnabas's heart_. Angelique had fancied the idea of making Sarah an apprentice to cultivate the girl's intuitive understanding of the spirit world. Now it seemed she could be a rival for his attention more than Josette ever was. Romantic love could be manipulated or extinguished but a family bond was eternal. _The time may come when I'll need to do something about her._

#

Angelique ventured upstairs on the First Day of Christmas as the rooster squawked and the sparrows chirped. The aromas of coffee, yeast bread, scrambled eggs, sausage, and fried potato hash filled the hallways. Servants had prepared the holiday table for breakfast. A wreath of holly branches held tall white candles. A cake loaf called _stollen_ had heavy chunks of dried fruit and thick white icing. Assorted cookies were piled on a platter. The good silverware twinkled on the bleached tablecloth. The best china plates, stamped Wedgwood in elegant cursive, were arranged with meticulous care.

None of the Collins family came to the double rows of vacant chairs. The death vigil was all that mattered to them.

Her empty stomach gurgled hunger as she ascended the stairs. The tantalizing odors of the holiday feast gradually faded behind her to be replaced with the festering stench of a man bleeding out the last of his life. Death spirits stalked the place, faceless eyes that lingered in the paneling and the rafters. All the Collinses who had lived in this house before and passed on into the next realm. All the old ones who had lived in this land before the white men built a house on top of their bones. They kept a vigil, too, for one more who would soon join their number.

Candles in wall brackets had burned down to waxy icicles. No one had replaced the candlesticks. No one standing vigil at Jeremiah's bedroom door seemed to notice that morning had come at all.

Barnabas at the threshold stood looking inside Jeremiah's room. Angelique came to his side. From his shoulder, she looked into the room at the same angle as he did. She saw his view of Josette kneeling by the dying man's bed and whispering prayers into her rosary beads.

Abigail and Joshua sat on upright chairs at the foot of the bed. From where she stood, Angelique could not see their faces: only the plain dark skirts of Abigail's gown and the man's sleeve leaning on the knob of a walking cane.

"How is he?" Angelique asked in a respectful hush.

Barnabas jumped a little, surprised to notice her there. "What are you doing here?"

"I waited..." She finished the thought silently in her mind, _for you to come to me last night_.

He frowned her into silence. She had to express herself by widening her eyes and smiling up at him with longing. They could not even afford to speak in French with Josette so close. Barnabas's eyes, dark and cold, said to her more clearly than his words ever could. _Not now, Angelique. Not now._

At that moment, Josette paused in her prayers and looked sharply toward the pillow. Her brown eyes widened. She cried out, "Bon Dieu! He has stopped breathing!"

"Oh no, oh God!" Abigail jumped to her feet and reached for the ceiling as if Jeremiah's departing spirit were a bird that she could catch and keep from flying away.

"Well, that's it," said Joshua in a tight, controlled tone.

Barnabas lowered his head and closed his eyes. For a moment, he seemed to be a dead man himself, standing instead of lying in a coffin.

Josette continued to scream and sob over the body in the bed, now clearly a corpse deflated and pale. Angelique marveled at the power of her spell, that even now—when Jeremiah was dead—she grieved over him as if they truly had loved each other. Such madness... that if one believed a falsehood with enough passion, it became more real than the truth.

Joshua rose to his feet. "If anyone needs me, I'll be in my study making the necessary arrangements."

Abigail cried out, "We can't bury him yet. We must wait for the Reverend Trask to arrive."

"Who?"

"My friend from Salem. I've written him a letter. He is most knowledgeable in the ways of hunting out witches."

"Witches!" Joshua snorted. "Not that foolishness again."

"Jeremiah was under a spell, I'm sure of it. Reverend Trask will know if we need to do an exorcism on the body, before we bury him, to prevent him from rising up from the grave."

"Have you gone mad?" Joshua raised his cane, half threatening to smack her in the head. "Dead men don't rise out of their graves!"

"He might," Abigail insisted. "Who knows what will happen? There's witchcraft afoot in this house."

Joshua backed away. His arm that gripped the cane was shaking as if he stood in ice. "I've heard enough of this nonsense. It wasn't witchcraft that killed our brother. It was my goddamned son's musket ball."

Barnabas turned away. He stomped down the hall a few doors, went inside his own room, and slammed the door shut.

#


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

"No, no, help me! Help me!" Sarah's high pitched voice squealed in terror. Her small feet pattered on the hardwood boards of the corridor.

Angelique, with a broomstick in her hand, looked up from her chore. She was crouched to reach underneath the hallway table. Her broomstick's stiff bristles were in the middle of jabbing at the fluffs of dust gathering at the baseboard. The Countess duPres had complained of a congestion in her nose and blamed her malaise on the laziness of the Collins household servants. So Angelique was charged with the monumental task of eradicating every flake of dust in the vicinity of the countess's bedroom. She did not mind so much that the chore fell to her; she understood that the servants had better things to do.

A week had passed since Jeremiah's funeral. His personal belongings—his books, his clothes, his hairbrush and straight razor, his walking cane that he never used, the keepsake trinkets and artwork collected in his travels—all had to be packed into trunks. The sum total of a middle-aged man's lifetime, accumulated for nothing, for no one, just making work for those whose job it was to clean up. Servants made a caravan on foot, trudging knee deep in crunchy snow. They spent the whole week hauling trunks uphill to the basement of the newly constructed mansion. By Saturday they still had not finished.

"Help!" Closer and closer, the little girl rushed wildly towards Angelique and away from whoever chased her. Sarah's long pink skirt stirred up the piles of dust and crumbs that had just been swept. Her arms in ruffled sleeves flapped like a flightless bird's wings.

By chance, Sarah slapped a porcelain vase brought from China. The vase tipped over. Angelique with a broom in her hands did not have time to catch it the ordinary way. Her eyes flared widely, and her mind filled with a single word, _NO!_ The vase wobbled on its base and then raised itself back upright.

"Angelique, save me!" The little girl crashed into the woman and clutched onto her slender waist.

"Sarah, whatever is the matter?" Angelique propped her broomstick against the wall.

"She's chasing me! She wants to hurt me!"

Heavier footsteps thundered up the stairs, hard soled shoes pounded by furious legs. "Where are you? Where'd you go, you little vixen?"

That was the stern voice of Phyllis Wick the little girl's governess. Sarah squeezed tighter. Angelique draped a protective arm around her shivering shoulders.

Phyllis Wick blocked off Sarah's escape to the stairway. Not an imposing woman, physically, she managed to convey menace by the illusion of size. Her walnut-brown hair was styled in heavy ringlets of curls. She wore a working woman's dress of muslin and linen in several overlapping layers of skirts. Though she was hardly twenty-five years old, she behaved like a stern spinster aunt.

"There you are, you naughty little brat." Phyllis aimed a sharp finger at Sarah like the point of a pistol. "Come here, so I can give you another spanking."

Sarah squealed and buried her face against Angelique's small breasts.

Angelique fluttered her eyes and ventured to smile. "What has the child done, Phyllis?"

"I caught her downstairs in the basement, playing her flute in the stronghold room."

"I'm sorry, 'the stronghold room'?" she asked.

"It's a brick room with a locked iron door. Mister Collins said no one is to go down there, especially not her. He keeps his old militia guns and barrels of gunpowder. It's not safe for a child! If he hears that I let her go down there, he'll have me discharged or whipped."

Sarah wept freely, now. Her tears and her drool soaked into Angelique's thin dress. A very old memory resurfaced in Angelique's mind, of being a small child herself about this age and clinging to the skirts of her nursemaid Veronique as the gentle woman patted her back and told her everything would be all right. It was a sweet memory she treasured in a secret locked box in her mind all these years. To recall it was like reopening an old wound.

Angelique gripped Sarah's shoulders and yanked her away at arm's length. "Sarah, why on earth would you think of going down into such a place alone?"

"I had a dream," the little girl blubbered, her pale blue eyes encircled with swollen scarlet lids. "I had a friend—a special grown-up lady—who wanted to play with my doll. She was in that room in the basement. She was lonely and scared and crying. But when I got downstairs, there was nobody there."

"It was just a dream," Angelique told her. "It wasn't real. No one is locked in the basement."

"But I saw her!" Sarah insisted. "I was going to share my doll with her."

"This doll?" Phyllis held up the figurine with a round wooden head and plain dress of blue cotton. "Why would anyone want to play with this ugly thing?"

"It's mine! Give it back!"

Phyllis smacked the doll against a support beam of the wall. She swung her whole arm, full force. The doll's wooden head cracked audibly. Sarah screamed a high-pitched wail as if she herself had been stabbed.

Then the governess hurled the broken thing at her. "Here is your doll, Sarah! No one's going to want to play with it now!"

"I hate you, I hate you! I want my other governess, the nice one with the black hair."

Phyllis's flat face twisted a sneer. "Stop pretending, you wicked little liar. There is no other governess but me."

For a moment, Angelique noticed a wavering in the shadow cast by the candlelight. In that brief glimpse in the corner of her eye, a faint translucent figure passed in and out of sight. A tall slender woman with long black hair, in a rouge house dress, strolled by. Angelique blinked and it was gone. She inhaled surprise at the peculiar vision; not a ghost or a demon spirit, no, it was more like the house had a memory of someone else who had walked before, or who had not walked here yet. By now, she fully accepted that Sarah's dreams were not all foolishness and imagination. The child clearly had a keen perception of the spirit world that pervaded Collinwood, and certainly more so than this dull-witted Phyllis.

Sarah sank to the floor, her soft skirts pooling around her thin legs. She picked up her doll and lovingly cradled it in her arms. Sniffling and shuddering from sobs, she softly sang to it, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down..."

"Oh that infernal song again!" Phyllis cried.

A man's boot steps ascended the stairs. Angelique's heart thumped. She knew the cadence of those footfalls, the weight of that body, the rhythm of his movement. Before he made his appearance at the top of the corridor, she knew that he had come... but not for her.

Barnabas rushed to his little sister and dropped to one knee beside her. Today, he wore his maroon velvet coat with a green satin waistcoat underneath. The ruffled cuffs of his sleeves were perfectly pressed into crisp pleats. His blue cravat was neatly tied into a bundled bow under his chin. The onyx ring was the only spot of blackness in his apparel.

"Sarah, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"My doll is broken."

"Let me see... Oh, yes." Barnabas received the injured party into the palms of his hands with all the tenderness of a battlefield doctor. "How did this happen?"

Phyllis's wide mouth gaped open. Angelique smiled at the woman's delicious fear. _Confess to him_, she commanded in her thoughts. _Provoke his rag__e. Let me see his dark eyes alight with fire. He is never more terribly wonderful than when he is enraged._

"I... I..." Phyllis stammered.

Sarah said, "I dropped it."

"Now, Sarah, you must be more careful with your things. I purchased this for you in Philadelphia. I don't anticipate going back there anytime soon."

"I'm sorry."

"That's quite all right." He plucked a pale blue handkerchief from the cuff of his sleeve and used it to dab at the little girl's cheeks. "Now, let's dry those tears. Everything's going to be all right. Come with me."

"Where?"

"I'm going to fix your doll."

Sarah sprang to her feet. He rose to stand alongside her. Once again, the extreme disparity in their ages was clear. His sister's height barely topped the second button of his waistcoat. Angelique gazed at the two of them, a mismatched pair, and yearned to penetrate into the memories of the man's pain so that she could comfort him. He was the first born and the eldest. Surely he would remember the many times that his lovely mother Naomi had suffered in her birthing bed. The stillbirths... the miscarriages... the false starts of pregnancies... the infants who perished of diphtheria in their cribs... a chain of failures that drove Naomi to embrace the crystal decanters of Spanish sherry more frequently than she embraced her husband. It was a miracle that Sarah was born, and survived childhood, and stood before them now.

Angelique saw the innocent affection in Barnabas's gaze, the sort of saintly love that he had never shown to her or even to Josette. At that moment, she realized, _He will do anything for his sister's sake. Yes, anything._

Phyllis said, "Excuse me, sir, but I should take her back to the nursery for her nap. It's past the hour. I'm afraid I've been too lenient with her."

Sarah stomped her foot. "I don't want to take a nap!"

Barnabas patted her gently on the lace cap. "You go ahead to the nursery. I'll fix your doll while you're sleeping, and I'll bring it back to you."

Sarah pouted. "Promise?"

"I promise."

#

Angelique hurriedly brought the earthenware cruet to Barnabas who waited for her in the parlor. "Here is the glue!" she exclaimed upon rushing into the room.

Barnabas said, "Thank you," but did not look up from his task. He had spread a few layers of kerchiefs on the writing table for the broken doll to lay upon. Its little blue bonnet off to the side, its knob of a head revealed to all the world. The crack was a jagged gouge at the doll's left-hand cheek, splitting down through one painted-on eye. Angelique briefly thought it a strange coincidence that the injury to Sarah's doll was the same as the musket ball that had torn Jeremiah's skull in half.

Angelique stood close by his chair. She held forth the cruet and expected him to take it from her hand. Perhaps, for a brief moment, their fingers might touch.

"Put it down on the desk, please." Barnabas rapidly opened and closed the desk's small drawers until he found a silver-plated letter opener.

She obeyed but choreographed the placement of the cruet so that her wrist crossed over his sleeve's cuff. In withdrawing she allowed a brush of her own fingers across the back of his hand. _So soft_, she thought with a shudder. His skin was like rose petals on a warm summer day.

Barnabas startled at her touch and fumbled with the doll. "That... that, uh, will be all. Thank you, Angelique."

She leaned toward him, about to say so much more. She choked back on the speech that she ached to scream into his ear. _My touch still arouses you, doesn't it, my love? Why do you deny the feel__ings that so obviously rage inside of you? Touch me again, as you so earnestly wish to do, and you'll never be able to let me go, and I'll never want you to._

Barnabas uncorked the glue. He dipped in the letter opener. He scooped up a dripping dab of the honey-colored resin. Gently, he smeared the resin into the doll's cracked head. Again and again, he dipped and dabbed. His long slender fingers poised over his work with an uncommon grace. The sight of those hands at their delicate task weakened her knees. Her thoughts filled with the last time those hands had touched her. All the hidden places where he had kissed, during those hot nights in Martinique, her skin now prickled and tingled under the confines of her dress.

He wrapped the doll's head with a bit of string. "It will need a few hours to dry."

"You did excellent work, Doctor Collins." Angelique picked up the tiny blue bonnet and fiddled with tugging straight the lace trim. "I'll take it to her when she's finished with her nap."

He looked up at her. "You would do that?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I?"

He corked the resin. "I apologize. It was wrong of me to assume."

"Assume what?"

He turned in his chair to avoid her direct gaze and occupied his hands with wiping off the letter opener. He kept wiping it long after all traces of resin were clean. "Regardless of what our relationship may be, I should remember that it has no bearing on your compassion for my sister. Obviously, you've been kind to her. She likes you very much."

"She's a very sweet child."

"I only wish her governess felt the same way as you do. That dreadful woman! Such a stern and bitter shrew! But it's my father who pays her salary. I have nothing to say about it." He tossed the letter opener into the desk's drawer and slammed it. The drawer being so tiny, it made a very small rattle, insufficient for the glorious rage that was building up inside him.

"She spanks her with a wooden spoon," Angelique told him.

Barnabas curled his hands into fists. "I know. My father encourages it."

"It pains you to see anything hurt her, doesn't it?"

He sprang to his feet and swiftly crossed the room. He gripped the fireplace mantle and gazed down into the flames that lapped the logs. "My father used to whip my legs with a willow switch when I was a boy, but I understand why he did it. I was a rude and defiant little scamp."

"You?" She giggled softly to imagine him as a mischievous boy.

"Sarah is nothing but a tender soul of sweetness and light. How anyone could perceive the least inkling of misbehavior in her is beyond my comprehension. Moreover, I cannot fathom how anyone would have the heart to inflict pain upon her. Surely someone like that has no heart at all."

Angelique quavered on her feet, longing to rush across the room into his arms, to consume his deep frown with her kisses. But she had tried that before and he had rejected her. No, he needed a reason to come to her willingly. The desires of his body were not powerful enough to overcome the turmoil in his heart. Josette had betrayed him and abandoned him, and yet he did not seek comfort in Angelique's embrace. He tormented himself with solitude and had closed off that part of his heart that could love anyone. _He needs me to cure him of this obsession for Josette or he will wallow in self-pity for the rest of__ his life! I can't allow him to waste himself over her. What I must do, however painful, is for his own good._

Gazing aside to the doll on the desk, Angelique saw a fresh path open in the dark woods. _Sweet little Sarah._

#


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Hat pins were easy to find. The Countess duPres had a box full of them. Angelique cradled the doll in one hand, ever so gently, and murmured her intentions to the soul of the doll. It was so easy. One pin to the shoulder... One pin to the stomach...

Angelique smiled secretly in the privacy of her little servant room. She imagined what her eyes could not see. A little child in her sick bed—what a pathetic sight she would be. Humming a happy little Creole tune, she made herself a kettle of tea.

_Soon, he will come to me. Sarah has fallen ill! Oh that is a shame, I will say. Is there anything I can do? _Angelique choreographed how she would comfort him: a hand gently resting on his shoulder, a light touch to his hand, a kiss to his cheek and he would turn to her wanting more.

Someone knocked twice and, without waiting for an invitation, flung open the door. Instead of Barnabas coming to her in distress, it was the little girl's governess.

Phyllis Wick cried out, "I didn't do it!"

Angelique hurriedly tucked away the doll with its incriminating pins sticking out of the shoulder and belly. "You didn't do what?"

"Mister Barnabas is furious with me!" Phyllis was weeping unrestrained, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. The handkerchief clutched to her cheek was already limp with tears. "He accused me of spanking her beyond what's necessary. 'Beating her like a mule,' he said. To me, he said this! I have never been so insulted. He accused me of causing her pains. He demanded to his father that I be discharged from my position!"

Angelique blinked a few times to collect her thoughts. "I'm quite sure I don't know what you're talking about. Who is in pain?"

"Sarah! That wicked little brat has fallen ill. Somehow, Mister Barnabas blames me!"

Angelique sighed a tremulous sort of half-chuckle. "Well, does he have any cause for blame?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh come now, Phyllis, we're both equals here. You can tell me the truth. What did you do to torment that sweet child?"

"No, no, I never did anything but spank her gently with the flat of a spoon!" Phyllis flung herself forward into Angelique's arms. "Help me! Talk to them!"

She gripped the woman by the wrists and pried her off. "How do you think I can have influence over Monsieur Barnabas? I am a servant the same as you."

Phyllis gulped and took a few moments to wipe her face. She wiped left cheek, right cheek, and gradually her eyes cleared. _Such bland, unintelligent eyes_, Angelique thought, pursing her lips to restrain a haughty smirk. _Brown like a horse and equally witless._

"I think you could have a great deal of influence over Mister Barnabas," Phyllis said slowly, each word carefully pronounced like dictation of a writing lesson to a child.

Angelique's lips quivered in a sort of mirthless smile, no longer haughty, no longer so confident against the way Phyllis stared at her. "However do you mean?"

"I've worked as a governess since I was sixteen. I've lived in a couple of fine houses, by now, in Philadelphia, in Williamsburg, in New York, and most recently in Boston." Phyllis pulled back her shoulders to stand a little straighter and taller. "In my first job, as I've confessed before God, the master of the house took a fancy to me and we succumbed to the devil's temptation. His wife had me discharged but, out of shame, gave me the finest references. In my next two jobs, I stayed chaste, but I saw things... I saw the masters of other houses... I saw the handmaidens who attracted their fancy the same as what happened to me. I learned to see the signs."

Angelique turned aside. "I can't imagine why you're confessing these things to me. Surely it's none of my concern what the masters of other houses are doing."

Phyllis pointed her finger at Angelique like the barrel of a pistol. "I said, I know the signs."

"What signs?"

"You an' Mister Barnabas. The way you look at him across the room, when you think no one's paying attention. And the way he looks at you, when he thinks he can get away with it."

Angelique's blood rushed in an ocean wave to her head. _He looks at me?_ "You... you're mistaken," she stammered.

"If asked to his face, he'll confess. Mister Barnabas is too honorable a man to ever tell a lie."

She whirled about. "You wouldn't!"

Phyllis raised her chin and displayed a haughty smirk. "Help me save my job, and I'll help you be alone with him whenever you want."

_How easy it would be to destroy her,_ Angelique thought. _I could transform her into a wild turkey and have her cooked for the family supper! No one would ever mourn her. They would assume she had deserted her position._

"Well, Miss Bouchard, do we have a deal? I help you, and you help me, and we both get what we want?"

Angelique's large eyes rolled up and down to survey this common woman. She could be destroyed at any time but, perhaps for now, she could be useful.

"Yes, Miss Wick, we have a deal. I will speak to Monsieur Barnabas."

#

Barnabas stood at his bedroom window, staring through the frosted glass at the swirls of snowflakes outside that filled the entire world with whiteness. Angelique approached him cautiously, unsure of his mood.

"I heard that little Sarah is ill. Is there anything I can do?"

"Doctor Thornton is mystified. The incompetent sawbones! As if it isn't perfectly clear what's happened."

Fury boiled within him, closely held in check by his outwardly stoic manner. Angelique moved around the armchair and ventured a little closer. "What do you mean?"

"It's that Phyllis Wick woman. I'm convinced that she's gone far beyond spanking. I think she twisted her arm behind her back or pushed upon her stomach in such a way that it would not show a bruise."

"Oh," Angelique gasped as she inched ever closer to him. Now she was within arm's reach but was careful not to touch him. At any moment, his rage could surface. She could not afford to be caught in the storm. "Oh, Barnabas, those are terrible accusations. How could anyone do such a thing to a child?"

"I've seen mistreatment of children." He continued staring out the window. Angelique admired the strong lines of his profile contrasted against the deep burgundy of the drapes behind him. "Aboard ship, I've seen the captains beat their cabin boys, and in other houses I've seen fathers beat their own children. Hard to believe there are fathers in the world more stern than mine. Surely you've seen things done to the slave children on the sugar plantation?"

"Yes I have." Angelique looked aside to the frosty window, sharing his view of the cold, gray world. "But are you certain this is what ails Sarah? Tell me, what are her complaints?"

"A pain in the shoulder. A pain in the belly."

"Nothing else? No fever? No pox? No vomiting?" Barnabas shook his head, no. Angelique forced a merry grin. "I know what this is! Why, I suffered from a similar thing when I was a child about her age. My _Mamma_ concocted an elixir of healing herbs from a native recipe, and it cured me instantly. After my recovery, she taught it to me. I'm sure I've seen those same herbs in the kitchen. I can prepare the brew... that is, the elixir in no time at all!"

He furrowed his brows. "I'm not sure."

"Please, Barnabas, trust me. You know that Sarah is also very dear to me, as she is to you. I want to help!"

His eyes crinkled at the corners. Sunlight from the window, muted by frost, shined a ghostly pallor on his pale face. Her worst fears were coming true; he was on the verge of weeping. _No, no_, she thought. _You must not despair!_

"Angelique, if there's anything you can do..."

"Yes?" she prompted when his silence went on too long.

"I would be most grateful."

"How grateful?"

His face was divided into two colors: the gold of the candlelight in the room, and the bluish white of the frost in the window. As she stood so close to him, she imagined that he was seeing the same effect in her face in the opposite mirror image.

"If my elixir cures Sarah, will you..." Angelique blinked rapidly in rhythm with her pounding heart. She worried if she were rushing things, but if she did not push now, she might never have another chance. "Will you marry me, Barnabas?"

"Marry you? How can you possibly think of marriage while my sister lies suffering in her sick bed?"

Angelique pressed her hands to the front of his shoulders. "Because it is only at a time like this that your heart is open to me. I'm not concerned about Sarah, for I am sure that I can cure her ailment. It's you that concerns me. You have withdrawn into solitude and I'm afraid that what ails you can't be cured with herbs."

He cupped his hands under her elbows but did not push her away. He remained still, his eyes staring down into hers, and allowed her to lean in closer.

"I can be a good and faithful wife to you," she pleaded. "You understand that I have never known another man but you. I've never wanted anyone else."

"Yes," he whispered. "I know."

"If you'll have me, I will never leave you. Promise you'll marry me, Barnabas, and I'll make you so happy."

His gaze lowered to stare at her mouth but he did not move to kiss her. He stayed grim and aloof, as regal in his restraint as the King Arthur in his books, and she—as a knight of his Round Table—was charged with a quest as sacred as seeking out the holy grail.

"If Sarah recovers, I will ask you to marry me."

#

Wagons bogged down in the snow. It was worse than mud. Although the ground was as hard a brick—frozen solid for miles around—draft horses sank to their knees in the dirty slush and wheels vanished up to the hub. Joshua Collins spent a few hours shouting at the workmen, at the horses, at the snow, and at God himself, demanding that wagons should transport the heavy furniture uphill to the newly constructed family mansion.

Of course, Sarah had recovered from her illness. It was simply a matter of pulling the pins from the doll.

Joshua Collins immediately declared that the family should relocate. He did not say his true intentions out loud, but everyone down to the cook's grandson understood it was to put behind them the painful memories. This was the house where a Collins had died.

"It's not quite two miles!" He raised his walking cane to point at the black trees poking up from the snow dunes like cloves in a holiday ham.

Men and beasts struggled valiantly against the elements. No one dared to try and talk sense into their master. They heaved and pushed. They shoveled the road, but the sky only sent down fresh shavings of flakes to fill in whatever path they cleared. As hours of daylight waned into night, they made no progress.

At dusk, Joshua Collins finally gave up. He ordered the workers to unload the furniture that they had spent all of their morning hours disassembling and packing aboard the wagons. "Yes sir," they grumbled. Ben Stokes in particular had a deep and murderous frown as frost caked on his eyebrows.

Joshua came back into the house, briefly, to gulp down a hot toddy and sulk by the blazing fireplace. Angelique stood nearby but at a respectful distance, waiting for him to finish his beverage so she could return the pewter tankard to the kitchen.

Naomi Collins approached from a side door. She wore all her glory of a satin gown of vivid French blue and a string of pearls around her throat. As always, her raven black hair was perfectly coiffed and her skin powdered smooth like glazed porcelain. "Well, Joshua?"

"The goddamned snow," he grumbled, taking another sip of toddy.

"I see no call for that sort of crude language," Naomi said.

"Today there is, madame."

Servants tromped into the house, two-by-two, lugging sections of furniture. They grunted with their efforts, going upstairs in a caravan. They brought back sections of canopy bed frames, loveseats, dressing tables, armoires with cabinet doors bound shut in twine, tea tables, bureaus and stacks of empty drawers.

Naomi clasped her hands gently in front of her stiffly boned and lace-frilled bodice. "Shall I take this to mean we're not moving after all?"

"Quite the contrary, we are moving tonight." Joshua handed off his empty tankard to Angelique who curtsied with her knees as she received it. "There is some furniture in the new house, intended for the guest bedrooms, but we can make use of it. Our accommodation will be somewhat sparse at first, but we shall make due with whatever we have. When I was camped at Valley Forge that one winter, we had much less."

"Valley Forge!" Naomi drew a deep inhale. "We are not soldiers, Joshua, and little Sarah is just recovering from an illness."

"Each room has a fireplace. A few of them have beds enough for now. The rest of your accessories can be transported later, in the spring, when the snows thaw." Joshua leaned with a stiff arm on his walking cane. "I shall hear no more objections from you, madame. Collect your daughter, and let's be out of here."

"Now?" she asked.

"Yes now, tonight! I shall not sleep another night under this roof."

The Collins family owned a few large sleighs. Those were used to transport the lighter crates, trunks, satchels, bundles of books and papers, oil portraits, and rolled-up rugs. Angelique marveled at the design of these strange vehicles. Instead of wheels they had a parallel row of flat planks spanning underneath the length of the carriage that skimmed like a fishing boat along the surface of the snow.

Sarah Collins was their most precious cargo. They wrapped her in thick quilts. She wore a fur-lined wool cloak and carried a rolled muff of white rabbit fur. She kept asking, "Where's my dolly? Why can't anyone find my doll?"

Young Daniel Collins mounted up his own large horse, jumping like a cricket to the high saddle. Once settled in command of the reins, he maneuvered alongside the sleigh. "Oh stop crying about your doll. You'll have a whole trunk full of toys at the new house."

"I want _my_ doll. She got broken, and Barnabas said he would fix her."

Barnabas came onto the porch just then, escorting Aunt Abigail and Cousin Millicent. They were warmly dressed in long hooded cloaks, and gloves, and muffs, but he only wore his tailcoat and no gloves at all. So he walked them down the stone stairs as far as the carriageway. When his flat shoes crunched into slush, he retreated from the flurries of snowflakes. Riggs and Jones assisted the ladies to climb up into the sleigh.

He turned to Angelique, who stood apart from the group and made no moves to get into the sleigh with Josette and the countess. He said, "I gave you Sarah's doll. Didn't you return it to her?"

She faked an innocent smile for him. "Of course I did. She must have lost it. You know that she likes to wander all about in places where she should not go."

"Yes, I suppose so." He continued to frown darkly.

"I'll search in your father's library and the cellar and the attic," she offered. "I'm sure it will turn up somewhere."

"Thank you." Barnabas rubbed his bare hands together. Without another word, or even a glance of good-bye at his family, he trotted up the stone stairs and went back into the house.

Whips cracked. Horses heaved. Sleigh bells jingled. Off they went gliding smoothly over the ocean of white powder. Angelique hugged herself against the gnawing cold, but lingered a few minutes longer outside to watch the caravan of open sleighs dip into the tree-lined path and be swallowed up in the shadows. Glass-and-tin hurricane torches dangled from posts on each sleigh's frame. Long after the shapes of the sleighs themselves had blurred into the darkness of the falling night, the twinkling specks of fire darted among the tree trunks.

_They're gone_, she thought with a swelling smile of triumph. _At last, they are all gone away, and Barnabas is alone. He belongs to me, now._

Ben Stokes tromped alongside her, a dark hulking shadow. "I know what you did. I thought you was evil enough before, but to hurt a child!"

"I didn't hurt her. She's fine, isn't she?"

"Something stopped you, thank God. What was it? Don't tell me you have a heart."

Angelique looked back to the house and saw a golden light turning brighter in the parlor's bay window. She imagined Barnabas stoking the fireplace. It had to be him doing his own work, as all the other servants were trudging through the snow, on foot, to follow after the sleighs. Only Ben Stokes remained.

"Of course I have a heart," she said. "Everything I've done is because I have a heart. I love him and now I will have him."

He moved to block her from returning to the stairs. He pointed his brawny arm at the forest path. "You're supposed to be going up to the new house with your mistress. I mean to see you go there if I have to carry you on my shoulder the whole way."

She laughed at him a hearty cackle. "The Countess duPres is no longer my mistress."

"What?"

"I serve Barnabas, now."

"No, by God," he growled like a bear. "I won't let you near him."

Her merriment dropped away. She fixed her harsh, commanding stare on the underside of his chin. "Oh yes, you will, and you'll pretend to be happy for us when Barnabas announces that we are engaged to be married."

"Married? You and him? But he loves Josette!"

She balled up her hands into fists, threatening to punch his broad chest. "After how she betrayed him with his own uncle? He hates her!"

"That was all your doing."

"And you'd better not give a hint of it, Ben, not one whisper that you feel anything but loyalty and friendship to me. Remember you can't say a word about what I am or what I have done, or your tongue will shrivel up in your head! Not one word out of your mouth, Ben Stokes. Not one word!"

#


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Her white wedding veil obscured her view of the room, but that mattered little to Angelique, for she knew every detail of the parlor by heart. It was not a cathedral as she had seen in the pen-and-ink sketches of Barnabas's books; there was no towering steeple, stained glass windows, or angelus bells to ring the hours of the day. This room contained the floors she had swept and polished with a rag, the Persian carpets she had beaten the bugs out of, the mahogany furniture she had wiped with lemon oil, and the crystal chandelier she had meticulously dusted. Now she stood in the very spot where she had stood on the first day of Josette's arrival, where she had watched Barnabas in all his callous audacity kiss his fiancee full on the mouth right in front of her. No doubt he had made a display of their love to hurt Angelique, to push her away, but his plan had not worked. She had redoubled her efforts that very afternoon. Now seven weeks later, her plans had come to fruition.

"As we read in Genesis," droned the minister Reverend Jennings. "''Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife...'

Angelique smiled amusement beneath the shelter of her gossamer veil, thinking of the verse that followed, _And they shall be two in one flesh. And they were both naked; to wit, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed_. Barnabas himself had taught her to read and write English by copying passages out of the bible. There were quite a few passages that she had memorized close to her heart. Still smiling, she was not surprised that the minister truncated his quote at that point.

"...thus God our Father has ordained that the husband shall be the head of the wife, and the wife shall submit to the husband."

Naomi Collins, his mother, wept softly and sniffled into her handkerchief. Aside from little Sarah the flower girl, she was the only family member present. Barnabas's father disapproved of this union so much that he had offered Angelique a hefty sum of money to leave town and never return; she had refused. Joshua Collins had brought his wrath to bear, full force, and disowned his one and only son. Barnabas stood beside Angelique now as simply a man, who owned nothing but his name. He lived under the threat of poverty, occupying what was virtually an abandoned house. All the servants except Ben Stokes had deserted him.

"Do you, Barnabas Collins, take this woman Angelique Bouchard to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health? Will you love, honor and cherish her all the days of your life, until death do you part?"

"I will," he mumbled.

"Who has the ring?" the minister asked.

"Here." Ben Stokes standing as best man moved in closer.

Angelique trembled as Barnabas gently took hold of her hand. His fingertips were cold. The silver band was colder. Hail stones outside tinkled on the window glass.

"Do you, Angelique Bouchard, accept this man Barnabas Collins to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health? Will you love, honor and obey him all the days of your life, until death do you part?"

"I do," she said in the clear strong voice that she used for her incantations. Of all the people gathered in the room, she alone understood the frightening and terrible power of words spoken in vow. This was the moment she had fought to achieve: she belonged to Barnabas Collins body and soul, and he belonged to her. Nothing but death could separate them now.

"Then, by the authority vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

Sarah whispered, "Put us under what?"

Phyllis Wick hissed back, "Shush."

Barnabas lifted Angelique's veil. For the first time she beheld him as her husband. Candlesticks lit only part of the room. Vast patches of shadows loomed behind him. His black suit coat and maroon waistcoat blended him into the darkness. He gazed at her, immobile, like a confused ghost freshly called forth from his grave. _What's wrong_, she wanted to ask, but dared not make a scene in front of his mother. _Am I not the face you wished to see?_

"You may kiss the bride," the minister suggested.

"Oh yes." Barnabas blinked into awareness. He swooped down, pecked a quick loud smack on Angelique's mouth, and then withdrew.

Sarah giggled, putting her hands over her eyes.

Phyllis Wick as maid of honor shot Angelique a sideways smirk, the wink of a confidante and fellow conspirator saying, _We both got what we wanted, didn't we, dearie._

Naomi Collins embraced her son in a loud rustle of silk and taffeta skirts. Barnabas wrapped his arms around her dainty frame. With eyes closed, he bent down close to her neck where a diamond necklace glittered.

"God bless you, my son," she murmured quietly in French tinged with her native _quebecois _accent. "I hope you'll be happy."

"_Merci, maman_," he whispered.

Naomi turned to Angelique, who also politely closed her eyes to receive the older woman's gentle embrace. His mother was a surprisingly small woman beneath the puffs and pleats of taffeta and the frilly lace around her bodice. Her dainty face carried the scent of talcum powder, and deeper on her breath lingered the odor of sherry.

"Welcome to the family, my dear daughter."

For the first time, Naomi Collins spoke in French to her. The soft yet deep husky voice reminded Angelique of other nights long ago in front of another fireplace far away. _Time for a__ crick-crack story._ Old childish feelings swelled to the surface. It had been so long since someone was genuinely kind to her. Surprised, off guard, the warmth of the simple sentiment pierced through to her heart. Angelique fluttered her eyes, fighting back the genuine tears that filled her lashes.

"I'll make your son a good wife, you'll see." In that brief moment, she truly believed that she would.

Barnabas said to Ben Stokes, "Let's pop open that champagne."

"Yes sir, Mister Barnabas."

The brawny servant tugged off the cork with a loud pop. He tilted the bottle over a silver tray holding several fluted champagne glasses of Waterford crystal. Instead of bubbling golden wine, a dark red liquid dribbled out.

"How strange," said Barnabas. "It's not supposed to be a claret."

Ben Stokes raised a crystal flute to his nose. "It's not wine, sir. It's blood!"

Angelique looked fearfully to the smoky eyes of spirits in the blazing fire, only this time they were not laughing. The old ones lurking in the leafless trees outside also turned their backs. Desperately she searched in the shadows for new and uninvited trickster spirits; was there someone she had overlooked—someone she had offended? _Who could do this to me?_

Naomi Collins clutched her jeweled necklace. "Could it be... Dare I say it?"

"Witchcraft," Phyllis Wick finished, and by chance, her gaze drifted in Angelique's direction.

Little Sarah calmly pointed to the top of the stairs. "It's Uncle Jeremiah."

A window blew open on the second floor. A chilling wind howled in the corridor. Angelique shivered in genuine fear. She cringed closer to Barnabas and he wrapped his strong protective arm around her.

"Let's not have any of this nonsense," he said. "Switching the champagne for blood is a cruel prank, probably cousin Daniel's idea. As for this ridiculous idea of witches and ghosts, I've heard just about enough of it. We make our own choices and our own mistakes. What Jeremiah did to me, he has paid for. What I did to him..."

In the pause, Angelique looked up to him and saw the gloom of regret pass over his dark eyes.

"...I can't take it back. Just this once, I wish there were such a thing as ghosts. I would give anything I own for the chance to tell my uncle that I was a damned fool."

Naomi with tears in her blue eyes took a step toward him. "Oh Barnabas."

"Please don't, mother." He turned away from her sympathy. "Ben? Would you escort the ladies back to the new house?"

The brawny servant was so choked up, he could not answer except to nod. He shuffled to the foyer and began to gather the women's cloaks and muffs.

Phyllis Wick, in the temporary role of a lady's chambermaid, escorted Naomi Collins to the door. "Come along, Sarah," the governess snapped over her shoulder. "Let's not bother your new sister-in-law."

Sarah grabbed Barnabas by the hand. She tugged insistently on his arm until he surrendered. He genuflected down on one knee. Once more the disparity of their ages made a startling contrast: the child and the man; innocence and maturity; light and dark. Yet strangely, the nine-year-old had an air of confidence much like the wise _Obeah_ woman who lived on the slopes of the sleeping volcano. A lost and bewildered Barnabas sadly looked at his little sister eye-to-eye.

The girl said, "Uncle Jeremiah heard you, and he's glad. He forgives you."

"Does he?"

Such anguish drained the strength out of his voice that it broke Angelique's heart to know the pain he felt. She could not restrain herself from reaching out to him. There was no reason to hold back now. He was her husband, and she was his wife, and it was no scandal anymore for her to gently stroke his shoulder.

"Promise me," Sarah said sternly. "Swear to me that you won't ever hurt anyone, ever, ever again."

"I swear."

#

On their wedding night, Barnabas performed his duty but showed none of the unrestrained passion he had shown in Martinique. He climbed on top of her as if mounting a saddle. She stroked his back to encourage him. She spoke his name, but he kept his eyes closed. After he reached the inevitable conclusion, he rolled over and settled into his pillow. She wrapped her arms around him from behind. By her touch, she comforted him; her fingertips stroking his naked shoulder explained more than she could say in mere words. She understood that the events of the past month weighed upon his heart. So much had happened! A lesser man would have broken. He had been betrayed by a woman; he had killed his uncle in a duel; his sister had been ill; his father had disowned him. _My love will heal you, my darling_.

She slipped into a dream obscured by thick drifts of fog swirling around her feet. Snowflakes sprinkled from a slate sky. Leafless trees snagged on her hair. She kept walking, with a sense that she needed to get somewhere, but was not sure of her destination or her direction.

"Angelique! Angelique!" Women's voices howled in the wind. She followed them uphill, over craggy rocks that pinched her bare feet. Soon she came to a cliff by the sea. From the very edge, she gazed down at gray sand and black rocks as sharp as wolf's teeth poking out of the surf. Waves like the ostrich plumes on a lady's hat crashed and sprayed against the rocks. Angelique had seen the power of the sea before and respected its raw, unfocused force of destruction. One more step, and she could plunge over the vertical drop. Her body would be smashed in the rocks. If that did not kill her, the undertow would sweep her out to sea.

"Angelique! Angeli-i-i-que!" the chorus of women howled.

She whirled around and shouted at the brambles and thorny trees that blocked her view of the safe pathway home. "Who are you?"

"We are the widows who have found release from despair at the base of this cliff. Angelique, you will join us. You will be a widow, too, and soon."

"No, never! Nothing will ever happen to Barnabas; I'll see to it! I am his wife, now, and I will love, honor, and protect him for all of eternity!"

The force of will alone woke her up.

Angelique sat up in bed, clasping her own throat. She blinked for her eyes to adjust to the dim moonlight from the frosty window. All colors were gray. It took a few moments for her to gather her composure and recognize the room where she slept—the room she shared with her husband.

"I'm sorry, my darling, did I disturb you?" She looked over to his pillow and startled to see it empty.

Angelique jumped out of bed. Barefoot on the cold floor, her lacy nightgown billowed out behind her. She dashed out into the dark corridor. Looking left and right, she spied a faint glow at a doorway. Not just any doorway.

Josette's room.

She tip-toed down the corridor. Her fears settled into a hard lump of rage. At the door frame, slightly open, she peered inside.

Barnabas stood by the four-posted bed, gazing through the lacy swag at the neatly spread quilt. He wore his brocade dressing robe with velvet collar. From behind, all she could see of him was the smooth cap of his dark hair. The jasmine scent of Josette's perfume wafted heavy in the air. The clink of crystal told Angelique that he was using her perfume bottle. He dabbed a little on his wrist and held his hand up near his face. Even from across the room, Angelique could hear him breathe—a deep inhale, a pause, and then an anguished sigh.

Angelique shoved the door open with a bang. Barnabas startled and dropped the perfume.

"You dare to be unfaithful to me, on our wedding night, no less!"

"I am not." From the rug, he picked up the perfume bottle and its crystal cork. "I was... Well, uh, I was packing up some of Josette's things for Ben to deliver to her, tomorrow."

"When are you going to accept the fact that she betrayed you? She doesn't want you! She loved you no more than she loved a new hat from Paris..."

"Please don't." Barnabas carried the perfume bottle back to the little dressing table and, with shaking hands, set it carefully on the silver tray.

"...and when she grew bored with that new hat, she got another."

"Must you be so cruel to me?"

"I'm telling you the truth!" She gripped the velvet collar of his dressing robe. "I'm sorry that I must say hurtful things, but you need to hear them. You need to forget about Josette. You are my husband now. I will never betray you, Barnabas. I will be your faithful wife throughout all eternity."

He merely stood there, eyes half closed, looking down at the cushion of the empty chair. "I know."

The blast of rage left her as quickly as it had come. He looked so forlorn that she could not resist reaching out to him. She slipped her arms underneath his elbows and pressed herself against him. Deftly she loosened the buttons of his dressing robe. He wore only his flannel nightshirt underneath.

"Make love to me again."

"All right." He stepped away, around her, and moved toward the door.

She caught his wrist and pulled him back. "No, here."

"Here?"

"Yes, here." She kept hold of his wrist, tugging him as she stepped backwards toward the lace-draped canopy bed. Josette's bed.

"I can't. Not here. Please, not here." His eyes widened and his dark irises glittered in the moonlight from the window.

"You must." Angelique loosened the tie strings at the neckline of her lacy chemise. She separated the bodice panel and revealed a little more of her bosom.

Barnabas drew back. "No, please!" He whirled about. She was too slow to rush across the carpet and catch him.

He dashed down the corridor, sprinting full out. His long brocade dressing robe flapped at his heels.

"Where are you going!" she shrieked, chasing after him.

He lost one of his leather slippers on the stairs as he thundered down to the first floor. Angelique held up the swathes of gauzy gown as she hurried to follow him. He yanked open the door knob. A flurry of snowflakes swirled inside.

"Stop!" Her fears turned now to his physical safety.

Barnabas tore into the snowstorm. Angelique followed. Winds howled between the Doric columns of the grand old house. Her bare feet were instantly chilled on the frozen bricks, but she thought nothing of herself. She turned left and right but in the swirl of flurries saw no sign of him. She rushed down the stone stairway to the carriage road. She screamed his name into the icy wind. He did not answer.

She had no choice but to return to the house. _I must find him, and quickly, before he freezes to death!_

First, she lit a candle as it was faster than building a fire. "Eyes of flame," she said with chattering teeth. "Eyes of fire. Eyes of night. Be my eyes where I cannot go. Find my beloved. Find Barnabas."

Angelique stared into the flickering candle. Her awareness of the room where she stood blurred and faded away, to be replaced by a scene tinted in sienna and gray. She recognized the door at the back of the house as the entrance to the servants' quarters.

Ben Stokes had a room similar to her previous room. He had a modest cot, a broad rocking chair, and a brick fireplace. The brawny servant slept on his stomach with one arm draped over to the floor.

Barnabas entered the room. He moved slowly to the fireplace. A few times, he glanced back to Ben sleeping in his cot, in the manner of someone not wanting to wake him up. Angelique watched him build a fire out of the tinderbox, step by step, with straw and kindling sticks. Eventually he placed a good sized log on the grate. Barnabas sat on the hearth stone and watched the flames grow higher. He stretched his hands towards the warmth.

Angelique smiled to herself, relieved that he was not outside in the freezing weather. But her smile was short-lived to think her husband would rather spend his wedding night on a rug in a servant's room.

Ben Stokes arose from bed. Her mystic eyes watched his mouth move, but being only eyes, she could not hear what was said.

Barnabas turned aside to continue staring at the fire. Angelique knew that posture of his all too well; it meant he did not want to talk about what had happened.

The servant crossed the room. He settled his great bulk on the hearth stones alongside his master. Angelique watched him speak a few words of what had to be clumsy encouragement.

Barnabas lowered his head. He placed a hand over his eyes. Perhaps he said something, or perhaps he was merely weeping.

_Tell hi__m all about it,_ Angelique thought as she watched him succumb to this latest fit of melancholy. _Confess to your simple-minded priest. Pour out your heart, Barnabas, to the man you trust most in the world. If you only knew that he has unwillingly assisted me__ all along. Tell poor Ben Stokes about how much you love Josette, even still. Tell poor Ben Stokes that you'll never understand why she betrayed you. Confess how much you regret killing your uncle Jeremiah, even though your rage still boils and you will ha__te the name of his ghost until the end of your days._

Ben Stokes gestured in the air, struggling to say something. Angelique smirked to watch the servant's agony.

_You cannot tell him a word about me, Ben. The spell I have cast over you is too strong. If you say one hint of a clue that I am more than what I seem to be... If you even breathe the first letter of the word 'witch'... Your throat will constrict, you will choke on your own tongue, and it will render you mute for the rest of your life._

Barnabas slowly drew his fingers away from his eyes. Firelight sparkled in those onyx irises. Even from afar, Angelique longed to be near him again, to have those dark powerful eyes staring into her. Barnabas spoke briefly to his servant. Ben Stokes's massive shoulders shook—the brawny man was breaking down weeping. Barnabas said a little more, obviously comforting him. Angelique's heart swelled with tender love, her rage at his rejection melting away. This is why she loved him so dearly; he was so unlike his father, so merciful, so compassionate, so fair to all men, even those born beneath him.

Ben Stokes removed a charred stick from the fireplace. He toyed with scratching at the coarse stack of rocks forming the hearth where they sat.

Barnabas looked down to the stones.

At that point, Angelique grew weary of watching the men talk. She closed her eyes. She snuffed out the candle. She went back upstairs to her cold bed and settled into the chilly sheets. She imagined the two men would complain about the fickle nature of women for a while longer. Ben Stokes would of course offer his master the cot while he slept on the floor. In the morning, she would apologize for being so insensitive about his painful memories of Josette; it would do no harm to feel sorry for his broken heart, for a little while. She closed her eyes while pondering what flavor of fruit preserves Barnabas might like with his breakfast toast.

#


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Angelique ate breakfast alone at a table set with two plates. Barnabas did not return from visiting Ben Stokes. The toast she had made for him went dry. The coffee turned bitter and cold, and no amount of sugar could sweeten it.

Donning her hooded cloak and knitted mittens, she ventured outside. Snow had fallen overnight—a typical January in Maine, so she was told, but the icy weather was more harsh than anything she had ever known. Cold scratched her throat. It clawed at her cheeks. It transformed her breath into clouds of vapors. By the time she reached the stables behind the house, her jaw chattered uncontrollably.

_This forsaken place is like the very core of Dante's He__ll_, she thought. Pushing up the barn door's crossbar, she entered the cold dark place that stank of horses and manure-soaked straw. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

She strolled the center avenue and counted the horses in the stalls. One was missing—the chestnut bay stallion that Barnabas preferred. Checking the wall of tack, she noticed that his favorite saddle and bridle was also missing. _Has he abandoned me? That doesn't make sense! Our argument was not so terrible as all that. Would he ride away in the snow wi__thout a shirt or shoes?_

Angelique started back for the house.

On the path, a man called out, "Mrs. Collins!" At first she did not respond; she was not yet used to people calling her by her married name. The servant jogged up to meet her. His name was John Riggs, an Irishman of average build who was barely recognizable under his layers of coat, cloak, scarf, hood, and rusty beard.

"Yes. Riggs, is it?"

"You're very kind to remember me, Mrs. Collins." He touched the edge of his cape's hood, where the brim of a cap would be, and offered her a bow.

Angelique drew herself up proud and tall, like the lady she now was. She gracefully accepted his bowing to her. "Shall we go into the house to talk?"

"It'll only take a moment of your time. I have a message from Mister Collins, that is, Mister Barnabas. He said he had to go into the shipyards today, very early, and won't be back until this evening."

"I understand, thank you."

Angelique took a step. The man hopped to keep up with her. She kept walking towards her house, impatient to start a fire and thaw out her fingers. Riggs talked on the way.

"Mister Barnabas also told me to tell you, uh... that is, uh..."

She raised the front of her long skirt to ascend the stone steps up to the brick portico. The front of the house faced so that the worst of the snow piled up at the rear. As she understood it, the house was deliberately situated so that the entranceway would be clear at all times of the year.

"What is the message?" she said impatiently as they traveled all the way to the front door.

"Mister Barnabas said that he's very sorry for raising his voice to you last night. He loves you very much. He wants you to wait for him without a worry in the world, because he's going to bring you back a present to make up for how poorly he's treated you."

"He said all that?" She tilted her head to study the fellow. There was no reason for this simple fellow to lie. Yet it all somehow did not quite ring true.

"Yes, Mrs. Collins, every word."

Angelique opened the door and, with a twirl of her cloak and long skirts, she rushed inside the shelter of the house. "Where is Ben Stokes?"

"The master borrowed him for the day, up at the big house. He's doing chores."

"Thank you, Riggs, that'll be all."

Angelique closed the door in his face. She hurried to the fireplace and worked to build up a large cheery blaze. Then she stared deep into the feathery brightness and chanted, "Eyes of fire. Eyes of flame. Eyes of light. Show me what I cannot see."

Ben Stokes indeed was laboring with a crew of other men. They rolled a series of barrels off the back of a wagon, down a rickety plank, and into the storeroom next to the kitchen. The barrels were labeled with painted-on letters: rice, beans, millet, corn, flour. The head cook had to point out which barrel to place where, as of course, Ben Stokes and the other servants could not read or write.

"Eyes of flame. Eyes of light. Show me, where is my husband?"

Her eyes took wing and soared over the snowy wastes and the forest's black trees weighed down with clumps of ice. Her winged eyes followed the wagon road, across and through the covered bridge, the river like India ink flowing dark between ice-capped rocks. The village of Collinsport was a shabby collection of shingled roofs and wattle-and-daub walls. Though it was broad daylight, the village was under a grayish tint as if being seen by the shine of a full moon. People walked the streets or the wharfs. Horses pulled wagons. Ships docked at the harbor.

Barnabas entered a lace maker's shop. He hesitated by the door, his eyes rolling to either side, surveying the sumptuous displays of lace handkerchiefs, lace doilies, bonnets, shawls, ladies' gloves, napkins, tablecloths, pillow shams, window curtains, and bedsheet coverlets. Angelique smiled with amusement at her husband's expression of bewilderment and dismay. _As much as you enjoy the sensual feel of elegant things, all that femininity in one place is a bit much for you, isn't it?_

Gradually, at a slow pace, like picking a path through a treacherous jungle, Barnabas made his way to the rear of the shop. A very old woman behind the counter greeted him. The hag's hair was a fluffy mop of white curls mostly concealed by a paisley veil. Yet her eyes were unchanged from the days of her youth—black eyes, as dark as the onyx stone in Barnabas's ring.

Angelique knew this shop well. She had accompanied the Countess duPres on several occasions. The old woman was a refugee from the territory of Moldavia, in Europe. She spoke very little English but was fluent in German and French. From the several visits, Angelique had gathered that the old woman had fled to America because she was something called a "gypsy" and that, in Europe, this was as shameful a bloodline as the African heritage would be in Martinique.

Barnabas spoke to the old woman now. His lips pursed in such a way that she knew he was speaking French. Angelique sighed with regret that she had only mystic eyes and could not hear. What she would not give to listen to his deep voice pronouncing the soft words of her native tongue.

The old woman retreated into a back room and soon returned with a mahogany box. She opened it for Barnabas to display its contents. On a pad of crimson velvet lay a variety of delicate glass vials. Each one of them a multifaceted jewel with exquisite caps of filigree silver.

_Perfume! _Angelique thought excitedly. _He is buying me a rare perfume._

Angelique closed her eyes. She sank back into the cushion of the armchair. She hugged herself and could not stop smiling. _He does love me. It took__ an argument for him to realize that he loves me, after all. It's time to give up on this silly dream of Josette._

#

Angelique spent hours preparing supper. She boiled a large wriggling lobster in a cast-iron stew pot, while red potatoes and purple corn cobs toasted in the hob of the chimney. She steamed a bowl full of snow peas. Humming a little Creole tune, she stirred maple syrup and a pinch of cinnamon into the Indian pudding with a wooden spoon.

The front door opened. She heard the clop-clop of his heavy riding boots and the flutter of his wool cape as he brushed the snowflakes off his shoulders. Angelique shivered with the thrill of his return.

"Barnabas, you're back!" She rushed out of the kitchen and into his arms.

He embraced and kissed her lightly. The weather had chilled his face to icy stone. "Hello, my dear."

"I'm so glad you're back! Supper is almost ready."

"Did Riggs give you my message?"

"Yes." Angelique tilted her head to cast a coquettish smile at him sideways. "You had business in the town, and you were buying me a present?"

From the inner pocket of his waistcoat, Barnabas produced a small cedar box tied shut with a ribbon. Angelique snatched it from him. She fairly danced across the room and stopped near the blazing fireplace. She tore off the ribbon and picked open the lid. There was a folded piece of lace. No perfume bottle—only lace. Confused, she lifted it out and held up a perfect triangle of the needlework so delicate and precise that a spider would feel envious.

"It's a neck kerchief. Do you like it, _ma cherie_?"

"Why... why, yes I do," she stammered. Perhaps she had closed her mystic eyes too soon. Perhaps he had changed his mind about the perfume and bought her the lace kerchief instead.

Barnabas moved away from her to the little table by the window that held several crystal decanters of claret, port, and sherry. "I'm quite chilly from the outdoors. I think I'll have a glass of sherry. Will you join me?"

"I would like that very much."

_Join me, he said. Such a simple phrase a__nd yet heavy with a greater meaning. Perhaps he will never completely give up on Josette until he fully trusts me, and for that to happen, I must tell him the truth. Not all of it... Not yet... Just a little... I'll say that I'm gifted with second sight a__nd that I have premonitions in my dreams. Yes, that's harmless enough. We'll see if he can accept that much and then, we'll see... He's so Jeffersonian in his scientific reasoning! He always scoffs at his Aunt Abigail who rants about witchcraft, as if she'__s just come from the Salem trials yesterday. He falls asleep during the Sunday sermon, if he goes to church at all. He may not believe me, and so, if he __laughs off the idea of premonitions, there's no harm in telling him more. I could say that I'm a magica__l healer—that the brew I made for Sarah's illness was actually enchanted. I could explain to him the legends of the island, the traditions of the vodoun, and he would be quite entertained. He told me once of meeting a warlock in Barbados and found that exp__erience very amusing. Yes... I must tell him! If we are to be married and spend the rest of our lives together, and bring up a family together, he must know—a little—of the truth of what I am._

He carried the two glasses of sherry across the room. He offered her the one in his left hand.

"Barnabas, there's something about me that you don't know. It involves my upbringing on the island. You may find it quite amusing."

"Oh? And, what is that?" As he sipped from his sherry, he watched her over the rim of the glass. Crystal facets scattered the firelight and created flickers like a starry night in his dark eyes.

"I..."

A knock on the door interrupted her.

Barnabas turned sharply. "Who could that be?"

Angelique, still carrying her glass of sherry, went to the door and opened it. Naomi Collins entered bringing with her a flurry of snowflakes and a swirl of light green cloak. She carried a large flat parcel wrapped in brown paper.

"Mother! You shouldn't be out in this weather." Barnabas made her set down the parcel by the door. He hurriedly escorted her to the armchair near the fire.

"I wanted to bring the..." His mother's jaw chattered from the cold so that she could hardly talk, but she gestured with her fur muff at the parcel.

"The package? Oh, the package is not important. You could have sent Riggs with it." Barnabas put aside his own empty glass. He grasped his mother's hands between his own and exclaimed, "You're freezing! Let me pour you some sherry."

"Here, take mine." Angelique offered it.

"No," he said. "I'll pour her some more."

Angelique insisted, "I haven't touched it."

As Naomi Collins reached up for the glass, Barnabas cried out, "Wait! I see a chip in the rim! You'll cut your lip."

He reached between the two women to grab the glass. In his haste, he accidentally knocked it out of Angelique's hand. The sherry fell to the carpet and spread out in a broad wet stain.

"Oh, how clumsy of me!" he said.

"It's quite all right." From the mantle, Angelique took one of the hand towels hanging to dry alongside Barnabas's socks. She sank to kneeling on the carpet and dabbed at the stain.

He just stood there, staring down at his wife on the floor. She felt more than saw his frown of disapproval. Angelique felt a blush, assuming that he was reminded of her past role as a servant. She had ascended to ladylike status so recently. Just this morning, a servant of Joshua Collins himself had bowed to her! And now, this evening, she knelt on the floor beneath the skirts of a lady and wiped up a spill on the carpet.

"Barnabas?" his mother asked. "Are you going to pour me that glass of sherry now?"

"Yes of course." He crossed the room, poured a glass, and soon returned to his mother's side.

"It's only partially full," Naomi observed before she tossed it back in one gulp.

"Well, uh, it's..." Barnabas tugged nervously at the lapels of his waistcoat. Angelique saw his agitation and understood; he never spoke of it, but he worried about his mother's fondness for sherry and port. "It's only a little swallow to take the edge off the chill. If you're still cold, I'm sure Angelique wouldn't mind brewing you a pot of coffee?"

"I wouldn't mind at all, madame." She rose to her feet with the soiled rag and the empty glass.

"The fire is adequate to warm me up," Naomi said with a bit of an embarrassed pout to her small mouth. "Now I must tell you, that parcel was sent out from Florence, Italy two months ago and delivered yesterday, but your father refused to have any of the servants carry it down here."

"But why?" He retrieved the flat, rectangular package from the foyer and brought it into the room.

"He said, 'if Barnabas wants his mail, he can...' Well, then he said an expletive that I can't repeat. He declared that you should come and get it for yourself. If he asks later, we're all to say that you stopped by the house."

Angelique studied the little sherry glass. She saw no chip in the rim. To be sure, she ran the tip of her finger around it and felt nothing. A quick sniff. The fumes of sweet wine had another underlying scent—something she could not name; something like a rotten mushroom.

Barnabas ripped into the parcel's brown wrapping paper and revealed a framed canvas. "Oh..." he groaned as if punched in the stomach. He held it aloft in front of his face. Slowly he turned to allow the firelight's full brilliance to shine upon it.

Josette in a white gown had been captured in oil paint. The face was not exactly a perfect likeness, but it was close enough to give Angelique the chills. Not just the painting itself, but the anguish that warped his shoulders as he held the frame in his hands.

Naomi Collins picked up a note that had dropped to the floor with the shreds of wrapping paper. She read aloud, "'Father insisted that this be his wedding present to us. At first I laughed and said, 'Papa, Barnabas will have me. Why will he need a portrait?'"

He gingerly set the portrait on a chair, balancing the frame on the arm rests. He stood like a zombie, immobile, emotionless, fully withdrawn into himself, staring enraptured at the image.

"Oh, Barnabas," said his mother. "I'm so sorry. Shall I take it back with me? Shall I put it away in a storeroom?"

"No," he whispered. "I want to keep it."

"Why?"

"You and Father took all the other portraits up to the new house," he said. "I have empty walls."

"But it only pains you to look at it!" his mother insisted. "Let me take it away."

"No!" He whirled about, blocking his mother's gentle hands from reaching for the portrait. "I said, please don't take it."

Angelique charged forward two steps and stopped. She held her ground, facing him off as she would face an opponent in a duel. "Why do you want to keep it, Barnabas? Do you still love her?"

"Must you ask?" he answered, his expression smoothing out to a neutral mask. "I am married to you, am I not?"

"Perhaps I'm jealous. I just love you so much!"

He asked, "Angelique, do you know what love is?"

"Of course! It's how I feel about you!"

"Do you? Really?"

Naomi Collins withdrew from standing in between the two of them. "I should go back to the house before your father notices I've gone."

Barnabas strolled with his mother to the front door. He reached for his own cape on the hook. "I'll walk with you. It's almost dark."

Angelique rushed nearer to the foyer, but the hard cold stare in his eyes froze her in her tracks. "Are you coming back soon?"

"Yes, I'll come right back for you, my dear," he said, opening the door. A blast of icy wind blew moth-like flurries of snowflakes into the foyer. He hunched into the collar of his coat and, with a protective arm around his mother, ventured outside.

#


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

In the bedroom, Angelique waited for him. Only the moonlight shined through the window. Every candle was dark. She sat in the cushioned armchair next to the cold fireplace bricks. She waited hoping that he would come... and hoping he would not come. She waited blindly, not making use of her all-seeing eyes.

When the bedroom door opened so quietly, her heart sank. He had made almost no sound coming up the stairs. He had removed his boots.

Angelique gripped handfuls of her silky nightgown of turquoise blue. The color enhanced the brightness of her greenish-blue irises; eyes like the summer sea, her nursemaid Veronique used to say. Before his entrance, she had hoped that he would come to her as a loving husband and they would forgive each other for arguing. He would have admired the color of her eyes. They might make love again as they did on those nights in Martinique.

In stockinged feet, he silently crept toward the head of the bed. Silver glinted in his hand. _A knife_. His arm plunged downward, stabbing into the pile of pillows that she had arranged to appear as if she slept there.

"What?" he gasped, pulling away the blankets.

Angelique rose out of the armchair. At her will, every candle in the room flared to life. Dozens of tiny flames sprouted into existence. Moonlight gave way to a rich golden glow. For the first time, they faced off and saw each other clearly.

"Do you hate me that much?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"You're a witch!"

"Yes." Angelique snapped her fingers in his direction. The knife he held sprang out of his hand. The blade clattered on the floor.

"You tricked me into marrying you! I'm under a spell."

"No, Barnabas, you married me by choice."

He rushed at her, raising his arms and holding forth his hands as lobster claws ready to strangle her. Angelique stood her ground. A mere look, and she willed him to stop. His arms pressed helplessly against the empty air as if the space between them were a brick wall.

"I never wanted you to know," she said. "Not like this. I wanted to explain it you, a little at a time, but you have betrayed me."

"I betrayed _you_?"

When he stopped pushing against the force of power, he regained the use of his limbs. He staggered back.

"You tried to murder me in my own bed!" she cried.

His eyes flashed dark with a terrible wrath. All the power of a stormy ocean and thunderclouds raged out of him. "Josette... When she left me for Jeremiah, that was all your doing! My crazy Aunt Abigail said that witchcraft was responsible. I laughed at her then, but she was right! You did a love spell on Josette to compel her to betray me, admit it!"

"Yes."

"You're responsible for my uncle's death!" His voice blasted at her so deep and so loud that, even from a few feet away, she felt it reverberate in her gut.

"No, I never wanted him to die. I expected that he and Josette would run away together, and you would come to me to be consoled. You were the one who challenged him to a duel. You failed to listen to reason when everyone in the house tried to talk you out of it."

"You're as responsible as if you pulled the trigger!" He gripped the bedpost and squeezed it hard. If he had the strength to could snap it in half he would have, as he wished to snap her neck.

"I've made mistakes, I admit that." She strolled over the rug and came nearer to where he stood. "But you're seeing now that I have greater powers than you can imagine. Those arms of yours... I held you back from hurting me, just now, but I could also compel those same arms to embrace me."

"Why don't you?" He stared at the rumpled blankets on their marriage bed.

"Because I want you to come to me willingly, not as a puppet."

"Why do you want _me_?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She caressed the back of his shoulder. "I love you."

"Love?" He whirled and came at her again. Once again, she held him back with a mere glance. His whole body strained against the hurricane wind of her power. Gasping and with sweat breaking out on his brow, he backed off. "You and I must have a very different definition of that word."

"Yes, I love you Barnabas! I always have, since I first saw you in Martinique and you kissed my hand. I'm the one you should have chosen. Can't you see that? I have chosen to be your loyal wife forever. What do you want of me? Say the word, and I'll do it. Shall I renounce magic? Shall I never perform another spell? Command me, my husband, and I shall obey."

He went to the window and gazed out through the glass at the silvery night. "All the strange things that have happened since you arrived... When I was choking... I couldn't breathe... The doctor was baffled."

"I was so angry when you rejected me, I wanted you to suffer."

"Sarah... Her illness... That herbal tea you brewed for her was not the cure, was it?"

"I simply lifted the spell." Angelique trembled with the anguish of relief that she could finally speak the truth.

"You would have killed an innocent child if I had not agreed to marry you?"

Angelique gasped. "No! I would never it go that far. I'm very fond of Sarah."

He stomped away from the window and headed for the door. "I can't bear to look at you. I can't stay here!"

"Going back to Ben Stokes, as you did last night?" she cried out.

One hand on the doorknob, he stopped in his tracks. Slowly he turned his head and peered back at her across his shoulder. "How did you know?"

"I have ways of seeing you, wherever you are. I know that you spent the night in Ben Stokes's room, just as I know you visited the lace maker's shop in town today." Angelique snarled at him bitterly, her own rage now erupting to the surface. "I thought you were buying me an exquisite perfume, but it was a vial of poison. Wasn't it? You poisoned the sherry!"

He merely stared at her, unable to voice an answer.

Angelique cackled a brief twitter. "Go on, go back to Ben Stokes! You will find no ally there. If you are thinking to ask his help in killing me, you'll be wasting your time. I have enslaved him to my will. He has assisted me, all along! Yes, that's right. In everything that I've done, Ben has known all about it, and he has protected me."

"As your puppet," he said softly.

"Yes." Angelique raised her chin to study his expression, looking for some sign to answer the question that began to form in her mind. "He didn't... He couldn't have told you about me."

"He didn't say anything to unmask you."

"Of course he couldn't! The spell I put on him is the most powerful one I know. If he were to even think of breathing a word that would hint of betraying me, the spell would choke him off, and he would be rendered a mute for the rest of his life."

Barnabas glowered at her with such fury that it broke her heart. Those eyes, that had once gazed at her with affection and desire, now so dark and cold. She had used her powers indirectly to win him over. Yet that same magic might have cost his heart.

"May I go?" he asked.

"I won't stop you," she replied. "Go, if you must, but if you dare to reveal my secret to anyone, Josette will die. Do you understand? Josette will die!"

"I understand."

When he left, the room crowded with furniture suddenly seemed so empty. Angelique choked back on a sob. A gust of unseen wind snuffed out every candle in the room. All at once, she was in darkness.

#

Angelique tossed about in bed throughout the night, tortured by restless dreams, some of them memories, some of them premonitions. She experienced once more the clear sand beaches of Martinique and hugged her nursemaid good-bye. She dreamed of laying in a coffin but being awake and hungry; she shrieked, "Let me out!" against the closed lid.

She dreamed of collapsing in Barnabas's arms, blood streaming down her chest from a small hole near her heart. In this dream, he kissed her cheek tenderly, and he spoke to her deep and low. _Am I never to see your eyes again? So ofte__n they looked at me with love, and I returned nothing but hatred. I was blinded by my fury... blinded to the pain that my rejection of you caused. And so throughout the years we battled and fought, and I never guessed that beneath my rage, I felt a love as__ strong as yours._

At last came the dawn. Alone in the cold kitchen, she sipped her coffee and nibbled on hashed brown potatoes. Those sweet words spoken by Barnabas in her dream lingered with her, and she cherished them close to her heart. Someday, she was sure, he would realize how he truly felt. She told herself to be patient and trust him.

Still in her turquoise nightgown, she wandered the house upstairs and down. Dust needed to be swept; windows wiped; rugs beaten; blankets aired... So much to do, and no servants to perform the necessary tasks. She ended up in the parlor, where she built a fire expecting he would want to see a merry blaze when he returned home. The clock on the mantle chimed nine.

No longer able to resist, Angelique called into the flickering blaze, "Eyes of fire. Eyes of flame. Show me what I cannot see."

As if perched on a tree branch, Angelique's mystic eyes looked over the garden at the new Collinwood mansion on the hill. Josette sat there, looking as beautiful as ever in widow's garb. The black lace veil only enhanced her creamy complexion and molasses brown eyes. Morning's light raised a rich golden tone in her skin.

Barnabas sat with Josette on the garden bench. He offered Josette a small gift: a gilded music box. Her mystic eyes were only eyes, and she could not hear a word they said. Yet, when the lid of the music box opened, Angelique could hear the tinkling tune. A playful melody seemed oddly familiar. After a moment of reflection, she recalled an afternoon in the sunlit garden of Andre duPres's plantation house, when Barnabas had spoken of buying a trinket in Morocco and he had whistled this very tune. So, he had been planning to run away with her even back then.

They rose to part ways. Barnabas kissed her gently on the cheek. Angelique's rage surged to a feverish heat throbbing in her mind. She closed her eyes—she could bear to watch no more. _How __can he be so foolish? He's leaving me! He's running away with her! Doesn't he understand that I will throttle the life out of her, __from afar, the moment they enter a carriage together?_

Angelique slumped in the armchair, weary in body but her mind sparkled with ideas. She still had the clay figurine that she had used to make Josette fall in love with Jeremiah. She could do anything to it, or make it do anything. What would it be? Turn Josette into a stray cat? Turn Josette into a bearded man? Choke her? Bury her alive? Drown her in flames? Cause her to fall in love with someone else?

The front door opened. Barnabas entered. "Good morning, my dear."

Angelique rose to her feet. "You're back!"

"I said I would return. Here I am." He hung his cloak on the hook by the door. He carried his wolf's-head walking cane and a flat wooden box to the hallway table under the stairs. Angelique spoke to his back as he leisurely made himself busy with removing his gloves and setting down his things.

"You didn't tell anyone about me, did you?"

He frowned at her from across his shoulder. "You know I didn't."

The memory of his tenderness in the dream still haunted her thoughts, but the man who stood before her seemed as a stranger. He was aloof, cool and calm, his face a neutral mask. They may as well be meeting for the first time. How different he was, now, from the man that she had just seen in the garden... the man whose eyes had sparkled to gaze upon Josette... the man who had kissed that dark-haired woman on the cheek. _He has never kissed me so tenderly_, she thought. _I have known passions and ecstasy with him that Josette will never know, but she still ow__ns his heart._

"Who did you see last night?"

Barnabas strolled into the parlor, callously passing by her. He reached the fireplace. He extended his hands to the flames and warmed his palms. Even from behind, Angelique saw his head tilt upward to gaze at the portrait of Josette. The soft-faced maiden with the chestnut hair and deep dark eyes gazed mournfully out from the frame.

She stomped toward him. "I asked, who did you see?"

"Lieutenant Nathan Forbes," he said. "He was skulking about the garden on his way to—or on his way from—an illicit rendezvous with my cousin Millicent. They're quite an odd pair of lovers. Can I trust that your witchcraft had nothing to do it?"

"I have no interest in Mister Forbes or your cousin. Their affair is entirely their own doing. Who else did you see?"

"The Countess duPres." Without turning around, his attention remained fixed upon the portrait above the mantle. "She sends her regards."

"Who else?" she insisted, her voice trembling now.

"No one."

"You're lying!"

Barnabas whirled about to face her. Now his dark eyes flashed with black lightning. "Very well, yes, I spoke to Josette briefly."

"You have been unfaithful to me!"

Barnabas stiffened his shoulders. "I have not! I spent hardly five minutes with her."

"Don't bother to deny it," she cried. "I saw you in the garden. I saw you give her that music box. You have betrayed me with your heart and soul. You still love her, don't you? Don't you?"

"How can I not continue to love her," he shouted back. "Knowing what you've done to her?"

"Oh," she laughed as the fury caused her voice to quaver. "I have not yet begun to do anything to her. But I will! You foolish man, do you think that by sending her away she'll be safe? What other plans do you two have?"

He looked aside, his attention wandering in the direction of the foyer. "None."

Angelique's hands balled into fists. Her arms stiffened against the urge to pound against his chest. "You're lying to me! I'm no fool! You sent her away so you could run off with her after you've killed me!"

He said, "There is no reason for me to do _that_ now. Josette is leaving Collinsport and you can no longer harm her."

Only a murderer could hold his composure so sure and strong. His calm expression awakened a fever of chills and rage. Her skull buzzed with the wrath, the feeling of drowning in the sea. He stood cold-hearted at the shore to watch her sink underneath the crashing surf. More than anything, she needed to wipe that confident smirk off his face. He needed to know the full of her power so he would never dare to betray her again.

"Your precious Josette may be safe, for now, but no one else is."

He furrowed his brow curiously. "What do you mean?"

"I'll show you what I mean!" Angelique hoisted the front hem of her filmy nightgown. She dashed upstairs to their bedroom. She pulled open the bottom drawer of her armoire. She tossed aside piles of neatly folded camisoles and petticoats. Wrapped in parchment paper and tied with a string was the object she had kept hidden.

Rushing downstairs, she held Sarah's wooden doll ahead of her face like a torch. Any last minute regrets she might have had, for shoving it in his face, vanished when she saw that he had returned to standing at the fireplace and continued gazing up at the portrait above the mantle.

"This is the way I will keep you here, Barnabas."

He turned around and his face registered a genuine, tender emotion for the first time since he had come in the door. "What are you doing with Sarah's doll?"

_So, the well-learned scholar knows nothing! Why did I even bother to hide it? If he would have found it in my armoire with pins sticking out of it, he would have laughed it off as nonsense. Well, he won't be laughing now._

"Do you remember when Sarah was very ill? She had a terrible pain here in her shoulder." She stabbed a pin into the doll.

"Stop it Angelique!"

She shivered like a teacher giving her first lesson to a stubborn pupil. He needed to know. He needed to truly understand how terribly easy it was. "And another one here in her chest." She stabbed a hat pin into the doll again.

Somewhere, in the grand new house faraway and up the hill, a little girl collapsed the floor and was once again screaming in mysterious pains.

"Give me that doll!" Barnabas stepped closer but her cold stare held him off.

"Stay away from me. This pin is aimed at her heart if you come any closer."

"Please, Angelique." He raised his hands invitingly. "I'll do anything you want me to do, but please, remove those pins!

If she weren't so angry, she could have almost pitied him. "No, I don't believe you anymore!"

Barnabas looked at her warmly, the way he used to long ago. His hands opened in a gesture of saintly compassion. "I promise you, I will not leave Collinwood."

Lies rang in her ears like a melody played off key. "Oh, you would leave immediately if you had no reason to stay here. And I am making certain that you have that reason!"

His warm tenderness soured. His eyes hardened once more to the expression he had when stabbing a knife into her pillow. "I'm telling you, if you do anything to harm Sarah, I'll..."

"You'll do nothing, as long as she is on the brink of death."

"Brink of death?" he cried.

Jaw set firmly, she reeled him into her complete control. Not a puppet, not like Ben Stokes, but a man being given a choice. "She will not die unless you deceive me again. But she will come close. Very close!"

She focused on aiming a hat pin into the heart of the little doll.

Barnabas in desperation backed away from her. Angelique's hand continued to tremble against the urge to plunge the pin into the doll's heart. What did it matter if Sarah died after all? More potential victims were available to be threatened: his mother, his aunt, his young cousins, and even his father. How ironic that he could so deeply love everyone he knew—except her.

He gracefully retreated backwards to the fireplace in five slow steps. _Good_, she thought. _Very good. He's learning that he cannot oppose me._

He turned reaching to the cushion of the armchair. Too late, she realized that the flat wooden box he had brought home with him had been moved from the hallway table to that chair. Too late, she realized what the box contained.

Barnabas raised a flintlock pistol. The barrel's empty hole stared into her face. Gunpowder popped. The muzzle flashed a rosette of bright sparks. Smoke puffed.

The lead ball's impact shoved Angelique backwards against the archway's column. The core of her chest filled with liquid. It was hard to breathe. Blood leaked down her breast. "Oh Barnabas," she cried. "What have you done!" Her legs folded underneath her. She slid down the wall to sprawl, half-sitting, with her turquoise nightgown spread around her.

Barnabas rushed to kneel beside her. He pulled the pins out of Sarah's doll but made no attempt to embrace Angelique. So this was not the moment she had dreamed. He gazed down at her with such a cold hate that she wondered if the dream of him confessing love were a premonition at all, or just the vain imaginings of her sleeping mind. If only Josette knew this other side of him—the heart of a man who could murder his own wife without remorse.

All the rage she had ever felt in her life paled to nothing. A clear plan of vengeance took form in her mind. Josette would come to know the monster that Barnabas truly was in his heart. Fire blazed higher. Her mystic eyes came to life. She watched this scene play out in a blur of two angles misty and superimposed on each other: the view from where she sprawled half-dead on the floor, and the view from the chandelier where her power was reflected in a thousand facets of crystal.

She said in a trembling, pained voice, "You didn't do the job well enough, Barnabas. I'm not dead yet. While I can still breathe, I will have my revenge."

He got to his feet and silently stared down at her.

"I set a _curse_ on you, Barnabas Collins. You wanted your Josette so much, well you shall have her, but not in the way you would have chosen..." She gulped, panting, struggling for air as her lungs filled with fluid. She tasted blood and bile, metallic and sour. "You will never rest, Barnabas. You will never be able to love anyone, for whoever loves you will die. That is my curse, and you will live with it through all eternity!"

Her mortal eyes went dark. She collapsed forward in a heap of turquoise silk.

Yet her mystic eyes still flew, hungry and eager to obey orders. Eyes on the wings of a bat swooped down into Barnabas's neck. Little fangs chewed into his jugular vein. His blood spurted out, staining his cravat and dribbling down his shirt. He cried out with agony as the bat feasted on his blood. The vicious animal drinking also slobbered its own poison saliva into his veins. Tiny black wings, thousands, millions, swarmed into his blood and made their home perched on each little scarlet bead.

#


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Angelique awoke still laying on the floor, surprised to realize that she was not dead. Her head throbbed. Her chest ached in pain. But she was alive. Truly alive. She only had strength to roll her eyes and look about; Barnabas had gone. She wondered again if her dream was accurate. Had she exacted her revenge upon him, or not?

She whispered a simple spell. The lead ball squeezed out of the little hole in her chest and popped onto the floor. Click, and it rolled away into a small knot in the boards.

Blood spread in a large pool underneath her. So much blood... How could Barnabas be so heartless to leave her behind, laying in such horror?

Her jaw set in determination. No one was going to help her now. Angelique closed her eyes and turned her thoughts inward, to the flesh that had been torn by the shot, to the shredded veins. Spider webs formed around the injured parts, and stitch by stitch, mended most of the damage. It was enough for now.

She staggered to her feet. Dizzy, she reeled and held onto the wall for balance. Looking to the side, she saw the place nearby where she had dreamed of the monstrous bat attacking Barnabas's neck. Blood spots spattered the wall; not her blood. His!

"No," she cried. "Barnabas, _mon cher,_ where are you?"

From upstairs, she heard Ben Stokes's voice. She raised the hem of her long nightgown and struggled to ascend the steps. Though weakened by the gunshot, she could not afford to rest. She had to reach him. She had to undo the damage she had done.

Barnabas lay in the bed in his bachelor room—not their wedding suite—and Ben Stokes stood guard over him. Sapped of his strength, he drooped sideways off the stack of pillows. Her worst fears glared at her: two puncture wounds dripped threads of blood down his neck.

Ben Stokes yelled at her, "Stay away from him!"

Angelique gestured to the front of her blood-soaked nightgown. "He shot me, Ben!"

"He had good reason to!"

"Perhaps, but that's not important now." Angelique staggered to the bedpost. She clung to the mahogany pole and studied the pallor of his flesh—already like a dead man. "I was so angry. I've made a terrible mistake."

Ben Stokes pointed to the puncture wounds. "Did you do this to him?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Is he going to die?"

"Yes, unless I can prevent it. Ben, stay here. Watch over him as I go prepare a brew."

Ben Stokes took a stand like a bear rising up. He growled at her with all the murderous fury of a witch hunter and executioner. "I'm not letting you near him, ever again."

"Don't you understand? I'm his only hope, now. I must undo what I have done or we are all doomed!"

"What do you mean?"

Angelique could see the color of poison spreading through him, a blackness like squid ink spilled in clear water, corrupting his blood into something inhuman. His heartbeat was gradually slowing down. His stomach was already turning grayish blue from within. Soon he would be unable to eat or drink as an ordinary man.

"If he dies," she explained in a trembling voice. "He will become one of the living dead."

#

Angelique dashed down the stairs to the first floor, her slippers fluttering. On the way through the foyer, she snatched up a single candle from the narrow table by the stairs. With the other hand, she hoisted her long skirt and sprinted, as fast as her legs could stretch open and gobble up the corridor. Two-fisted she punched open the cellar door and descended at reckless speed.

The candle flickered and dripped hot wax on her hand. Swiftly her footsteps tapped a rapid syncopation like the beat of a little drum going to war. She passed through another door of solid wood reinforced with a sheet of tin. At the base of the stone stairs, the chamber opened to a labyrinth of brick passages—some barred by iron doors and some archways that seemed more terrifying in their openness.

Angelique dropped to her knees just at the base of the stairs. She touched one of the flagstones. A few whispered words, and the stone obeyed, rising up out of its place. She dug into the soft black earth underneath and gathered a handful of chilled dirt. _Soil from beneath the home where he was born. Soil to nurture the roots of his humanity._

Back upstairs, she launched herself out the back door that led to the servants quarters and the stables. Snowy wind bit her cheeks. Her breath was like a cloud of pipe smoke. In her foolish schemes, she had imagined that she would never need to come to the back door again, once she became the lady of the house. Without pride, she dropped to her knees in the fresh-fallen powder. She used the base of the brass candlestick to scoop up a few sparkling flakes—as small and delicate as the wings of fruit flies and exquisitely formed into flowery crystals, each one unique, each one a work of angelic art. _Water, the source of human life... Pure and clean, fallen from the sky... Untainted by the earth_.

She fetched an iron knife from the kitchen. In the parlor, she climbed onto an upholstered chair and reached over the mantle to the portrait of Josette. She scraped the knife across the oil paint, flaking off sprinkles of powdered color. _Something to desire... The color of a dream... A reason to live._

Finally, she pricked her finger and squeezed out a few drops of crimson to mix into her brew of rosemary leaves and oolong tea. "By my blood I cursed you, Barnabas Collins, and by my blood I release you from that curse."

When she brought the pewter tankard to him, Barnabas's face had turned as white as the pillow. She feared he might be already dead.

He moaned pitifully, "Help me, help me."

She slipped a hand beneath his neck to raise his head. His skin was cold. "Drink this."

"No." Eyes closed, he weakly strained to avoid the tankard coming near his mouth. "You're trying to kill me."

"Drink it! I'm trying to save you!" She leaned in closer. Clamping her arm around his head, she forced the tankard to his lips. She gave him no choice but to accept the sour brown brew that she poured onto his tongue. He gagged and gulped, but did not spit it out. She held on to be sure it went down.

"Josette, Josette," he whispered as he sank half-asleep to the pillow.

Angelique put the empty tankard aside and stroked his cold forehead. For the first time in years—perhaps her entire life—she felt no jealousy at the sound of the other woman's name. Barnabas was not pleading for his lady love; he was saying a prayer. If he had asked for Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints to come down from Heaven and hold his hand, Angelique would have conjured them.

"Where is she, Barnabas? Where is Josette? Tell me, and I will bring her to you!"

His eyes snapped open, bloodshot, wild and crazed with panic. "No! I will never tell you. She's safe... she's safe from you..." His strength spent, he sank sideways into the pillow.

Trembling, she backed away. _What have I done? He fears me. He hates me. Even if he lives, he will never forgive me._ Angelique shook the thoughts out of her mind. First, he had to live. The brew had to work!

"Close your eyes, Barnabas, and don't open them until I tell you." Angelique grasped the heavy curtains and spread her arms open wide. Sunshine glared off the snowy landscape, a cold brightness more intense than any fire.

Barnabas cried out a wretched agonized wail, an almost inhuman sound like the howl of a dog being crushed under a wagon. Sunlight burned him; Angelique saw wisps of sulfurous steam rise from his skin. He covered his face with his arms. Only when she closed the curtains and the room dimmed, he settled down into hoarsely groaning into the armloads of tangled blankets.

"It should have worked." Her voice broke as tears glistened in her eyes.

#

That afternoon, his parents came to visit the house. Naomi Collins carried in her arms a ceramic jug swaddled in a towel. "I brought a wassail. Have you never tried it before? It's a hot mulled apple cider with sugar and spices. It's Barnabas's favorite."

His frowning father tagged along behind. Not saying a word, he made an intense study of icicles on the overhanging branches of trees.

Angelique blocked them at the doorstep, "He's not here. He has gone out."

"Where did he go?" Naomi Collins asked.

"I don't know." Her mind was too full of worry to think of a good excuse. "He left early this morning."

"When will he return?"

"I don't know." Floor boards creaked upstairs. _Impossible! He can't be getting out of bed. He barely has the strength to raise his head off the pillow._ Angelique aimed a fake smile at the sour frown of Joshua Collins and did her best to bluff. "Forgive me, I'm being rude. Please come inside and visit with me. I'll put on the kettle. As a Christmas present, Barnabas gave me a large tin of Twining's black tea from London..."

Joshua stiffened at the idea as if she had pointed a gun in his face. Angelique held her smiling performance, pretending to be unaware of his involvement in the so-called Boston Tea Party more than twenty years before. "No thank you. Naomi? Come along."

"At least take the wassail." His mother handed the swaddled jug into Angelique's arms. The cork had a scent of sweetened tart apples and cinnamon. "Keep it warm for when he returns."

"I will, thank you."

Naomi's eyes rolled to gaze upwards to the second floor. Soft blue eyes had a dreamy opaque glow. Her expression went blank as if asleep, or drunk, or listening to a song that no one else could hear. "I thought I heard him calling to me."

"Don't embarrass yourself." Joshua groped blindly for his wife's elbow through her green velvet cape. "He's not here."

"I didn't imagine it. I heard him!" Naomi stepped inside the house, past Angelique who was helpless to think of a good reason to block the door and keep her away.

The house fell into silence. From the bricks of the foundation to the rafters of the attic, the entire framework held its breath. Old spirits in the forest emerged from the golden shadows of day. They pressed their eyeless faces to the windows and gazed inside, waiting for what would happen. A high pitched squawking sound echoed in the empty hallways upstairs; the dark poison in his soul was gaining strength. Angelique felt his distant pulse like a drumbeat in the jungle.

At that moment, she understood that it was no mere chance that his mother had come. The power of his will had summoned her.

"Mother?" he called weakly from upstairs.

Naomi hoisted her heavy skirts in both hands and galloped up the stairs. "He is here! Why did you say he wasn't?"

Hastily putting the wassail jug on the hallway table, Angelique scrambled to follow behind the swirling hem of her velvet cape. "He's not feeling well. I didn't want you to worry."

Naomi pushed open the bedroom door and gasped at the scene. Barnabas stood weakly slouched and gripping the bedpost. His green brocade dressing gown, unbuttoned, sagged off one shoulder. His bare feet were as pale as his nightshirt. His face had turned ashen gray. His lips were blue. The bandage had fallen off from around his throat, or perhaps he tore it off. The puncture wounds in his neck had started oozing blood again. Long strings of dark red traced wavy lines from under his ear to down his chest.

Joshua stayed by the door and did not enter. Naomi alone helped her grown son stagger back into bed. "What's wrong? How long have you been ill?" She bent over him to lovingly tuck in the blankets around his chin.

Barnabas deflated into the pillow, his eyes closed, his mouth open to breathe in shallow gasps. Soon, he would not need to breathe at all.

#

For the next several hours, Naomi with her beautifully powdered face and jewels sparkling at her ears, wept inconsolably at the side of the bed. Even the taciturn Joshua Collins choked up when Barnabas looked at him and weakly said, "Father, I didn't think you would come."

Later in the afternoon, Doctor Thornton arrived with his small leather bag. He declared in his lyrical Scottish accent, "It's a fever."

He proceeded to affix several leeches onto Barnabas's forearm. Immediately, the black worms curled like shrimp burning in a fry pan. They detached and fell onto the sheets—dry and dead.

"That's odd." The doctor still held the glass jar containing leeches in one hand, and his tweezers in the other, ready to apply at least a few more. "I've ne'er seen that happen before."

Joshua Collins waved the doctor away. "Unabashed quackery! If you can't be useful, get out of my house."

Angelique stood apart watching his parents wallow in their grief. They were too distraught to notice her wide-eyed and shaking in helpless waves of true terror. Barnabas had to survive; he had to! She feared his death more than his parents feared losing him, for she knew that this death would not be the end. Imaginings plagued her mind and caused her heart to race: Barnabas with fangs returning in the night to chew into his father's neck or to hungrily gulp the blood out of his mother's jeweled throat. Even his little sister would be fair prey.

"Why can't the doctor do anything?" Naomi pressed a rolled-up hand towel to her son's forehead. "Why are they calling it a fever when he's so cold? Joshua, he's so cold."

Joshua stood by the window, his back to them all, staring out at the gray landscape and the lengthening shadows. "Get hold of yourself, Naomi. When we go to supper, we shall not speak a word of this."

"What?"

"We shall carry on as if nothing is wrong. I have instructed the doctor to do the same."

"Why?" Naomi cried, her blue eyes rimmed with red.

"I will not have our servants gossip in Collinsport that we have an outbreak of mysterious fever. I will not allow a panic in my house!"

"I can't."

"You can and you shall, madame. You are to say that we've come to visit my son and congratulate him on his wedding. All is forgiven. I will summon my lawyers to the house tonight and rescind the changes to my will. Barnabas will be reinstated as my son and heir."

Naomi turned away and gripped the bedpost. "I can't. I can't."

"Then, as soon as we return to our home, you have my permission to retreat to your room and drink yourself into oblivion. After all, it has been your habitual behavior as of late. The servants will think nothing of it."

Joshua walked proud and tall, tapping his walking cane on the hardwood boards of the corridor. Naomi could be heard weeping all the way down the stairs and out the front door.

Angelique stood at the foot of the bed. She said nothing of _good-bye_ or _thank you for coming to visit_ as his parents made their exit. All her attention was fixed on Barnabas. His eyelids were darkening to purplish rouge. Sweat flattened his hair. The locks on his forehead had started to form into a row of jagged spikes.

#

On that night, she even allowed Josette to come to his bedside. The young widow had arrived at the old house in panic, throwing open the front door boldly. "Where is he? I must see him! Something terrible has happened to him, I know it."

A premonition of doom—or perhaps the forceful will of Barnabas himself—had summoned her back from a roadside tavern. Josette had journeyed all day by carriage sleigh to wait for him. Angelique had guessed correctly that the two were planning to elope after he had killed her. Jealousy meant nothing, now. Perhaps this foolish, naïve love might give him the strength to maintain his grip on humanity. But with every passing moment of the darkening night, even that hope faded.

"Did you know you were ill when you sent me away? Is this the danger you warned me about?" Josette wore her smart tailored traveling suit and black lace widow's veil. Even in mourning for her husband, even in grief for her lover, she never looked more beautiful.

Barnabas sleeping did not revive as Josette gently touched his cheek. By the sound of his shallow wheezing, Angelique feared he might never awaken. Not as a man, anyway.

"Danger, he said?" Angelique came alongside the pillow. She dabbed a moist towel to his clammy forehead.

"Yes, he came to visit me early this morning. He said that I was in mortal danger and I had to leave Collinsport immediately. He wouldn't explain why." Josette slipped her hand underneath his limp palm. Brown fingers sharply contrasted his gray skin. "He seemed to be afraid of something. He was always looking over his shoulder as if someone were following him. Angelique?"

"Yes, mademoiselle?"

"This illness is so strange. It's not like any fever I've ever seen. He's so cold!"

Angelique said, "Oh his fever was burning an hour ago I gave him an herbal remedy."

Countess Natalie duPres stood observing from the foot of the bed. She had also arrived with Josette, dressed in her smartly tailored suit dress for the journey. Gloves still sheathed her hands.

"No, Josette is right. Look." The countess pointed at his neck where the puncture wounds continued to ooze and seep blood into the bandages. "Any normal bite would have made a scab by now. There's something very unnatural going on here."

Angelique took away the wad of blood-soaked cloth. She replaced it with another kerchief of gauze. That too quickly transformed from white into red. The tips of her fingers brushed over the wounds. She whispered in her mind a desire for the blood to clot. She had healed herself of a gunshot wound. Surely, she thought, she could heal this! An owl's cry shrieked a reply into her thoughts. When she looked into the bandage again, the punctures dribbled even more fiercely. The blood darkened to a purple hue as it was all turning rotten inside his veins.

Josette said, "Do you think it's...? Oh, I can't say it!"

"What?"

Her mouth hung open a long pause before she managed to choke out the word, "Witchcraft."

"Yes, yes!" Countess duPres gripped the lapels of her own traveling suit. "It must be. I have seen nothing but omens of doom in my Tarot cards since before we arrived in New England."

"No, that's absurd." Angelique coughed a trembling laugh. "If he hears you talking about such things, he'll be very cross with you. Haven't you seen the way he is annoyed at his Aunt Abigail for ranting on about Salem and the devil and so forth?"

Josette stroked the back of his hand. "In the garden, he asked me a question. He said, 'Did you choose to betray me with Jeremiah?' No one had asked me this in such a way before. I thought I should answer, yes of course, because that is what I did... But he insisted, as if he already knew that I should answer differently. He kept re-phrasing the question, and he asked it again and again. Did I willingly turn away from loving him? Did I make a decision of my own free choice?"

"And what did you answer, mademoiselle?"

Josette wagged her head rapidly back and forth. Tears leaked out of her big brown eyes. "I said, I wasn't sure. It all seemed like a dream. Things happened that I could not seem to control. I saw myself saying and doing things, but I never planned to break his heart."

The countess said, "As if you were under a witch's spell."

Angelique walked away from Barnabas and strolled across the room. She leaned on the bureau of drawers and looked at herself in the mirror. In the background behind her reflection, she saw the death bed scene—the man sleeping out his last hours of life, and the widow in black lace who sat in vigil at his side.

"You really do love him, don't you, mademoiselle?"

Tears gushed more freely out of her large dark eyes. "Yes, of course I do. I've loved him since that first day in Martinique when we strolled in the garden and he asked me to recite in English the colors of the flowers. Rouge... red. Bleu... blue. So many young men have called me pretty, but they never seemed sincere. They only wanted to own me for themselves. They never wanted me to learn new things. Only Barnabas gave me his heart unconditionally. When he called me pretty, and expected nothing in return, I started to believe it might be true. Oh why, Angelique? Why else would I leave him if I wasn't under a witch's spell?"

#

Throughout the long night, the three women took turns dozing in the armchairs at his bedside. They replaced the moist towels on his forehead. They changed the bandages on his constantly bleeding neck. They tucked and re-tucked the blankets around his arms, only for him in fits of delirium to throw the covers away.

Every so often, he babbled in his sleep, "The bat... the bat... keep it away from me!"

"Oh my darling," Josette sobbed at his pillow. "There is no bat. Why does he keep saying there's a bat?"

"He must be dreaming." Angelique paced back and forth, from the bed to the window, and from the window to the bed. She watched the moon, hour by hour, as it passed over a clear sky salted with stars.

Natalie duPres slumped in an armchair said, "Those bite marks on his neck could be from an animal. It might be rabies."

"They aren't bite marks," Angelique insisted. "No animals have been near him! They're a pox. The doctor diagnosed it as the plague."

From downstairs, the clock on the mantle chimed. _Five... six..._, Angelique counted in her mind. Each ping of the bell was a spike to pierce her heart. The end of the long night was near. Within a few minutes, it would be dawn.

Barnabas opened his eyes one last time. He managed to focus on the woman bending over his pillow. He smiled at the sight of her, but his forehead frowned. "Josette, you shouldn't be here. You're in danger."

"Nothing could keep me from you, my love." She leaned in closer, her face just inches away from his. "Please tell me, what danger? Has someone done this to you? Tell me, Barnabas, is it really a witch?"

"Josette. Josette."

"Yes?"

Angelique heard her husband's final words spoken to her rival, "I have never stopped loving you, Josette, and I never will... never, for all eternity. Wait for me. I promise, I will find a way to come back for you."

Sunrise flashed out of the forest like a burst of lightning in scarlet and gold. Snow had fallen overnight to a layer of fresh powder that in the dawn's glow seemed to be a meringue dusted with pink sugar. Icicles glistened as diamonds in the black trees. Storm clouds had traveled away. The sky was a clear dome of abalone shell. _So beautiful_, she thought. _He would have liked to see this dawn_.

When he breathed his last, and his eyes finally closed, a cold wind rushed on black wings through the corridors of the house. Angelique hugged herself. Her eyes widened, dry with terror. _I've lost him. I've lost him forever. All I can do for him, now, is th__e ultimate act of love. I must give his soul peace. I must release him, in death, as I could never bear to do in life. Forgive me, my darling._

#


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Sitting at the fireplace in the downstairs parlor, she worked at the brass tinderbox. Steel scratched flint, again and again, but could not raise a spark. Magic did not work for her either, as the pall of unnatural death stifled every whispering spirit under this roof. This house belonged to the sleeping vampire now. Only what he wished to happen would happen. Again, she scraped the steel needle across the chip of flint. Still no spark ignited the scraps of dry cloth and straw in the tinderbox. Her forearm ached; she had been trying for half an hour to start a fire.

Josette rested in the upholstered armchair where Barnabas often did his reading. A book with a title in Greek letters lay on the tea table. A ribbon marked the page.

Countess duPres plodded into the room, each step dragging against the weight of her skirts. She carried a silver tray and three cups made of dark green glass. "I can't seem to get a fire started in the kitchen, so I couldn't make a pot of tea. I found a jug of cider though. Angelique?"

Angelique looked up in surprise at the grand countess in her fine suit dress and lace ruffles and a jeweled brooch at her throat. The world had indeed turned upside-down. She received a cup from the serving tray. "Thank you, my lady."

"You have my deepest condolences. I never realized until now that you loved him so deeply." The countess narrowed her weary eyes in straining to focus, to stay awake after the long miserable night. "You must have loved him for as long as Josette did. How it must have pained you when he chose to become engaged to her instead."

"I understood that I was a servant. Society considered me unworthy to be his wife. I never blamed him." Angelique sipped at the sweet spicy wassail.

"You never blamed _him_." Natalie repeated each word slowly, drawing out the syllables, taking a breath in between as she pondered the idea. Gracefully she turned and brought the tray to Josette in the armchair.

_Does she suspec__t me? If she asks me questions, should I confess to the things I have done? I pursued a dream but in the end I created a nightmare. What does it matter anymore._ Angelique closed the lid of the tinderbox.

The front door opened. Morning sunlight brightened the entranceway. Shadows turned to sienna and gold. Outside the birds chattered loudly in the trees. A lone horse nickered like an old woman laughing.

Joshua Collins hobbled inside. Weariness stiffened his frame; his whole body seemed to be made of wood. He leaned on his walking cane, each step pained him as he approached the coral columns at the archway of the parlor.

"Am I too late?" he asked.

Natalie duPres extended a hand in his direction, inviting him to sit down. "Mister Collins, I am so sorry to tell you..."

"No!" Josette startled awake. "No, he is not gone. We made a mistake. He's only sleeping. I hear him calling my name!"

Before the countess could stop her, Josette sprang out of her chair. She dashed out of the room and up the stairs. Natalie called after her and was ignored.

"Barnabas, my darling!" Josette's voice howled on the second floor like a ghost.

"Excuse me." The countess ascended the stairs, slowly, wearily, pausing to sigh at each rise.

Joshua Collins ignored the young woman's outburst and Natalie duPres's departure. All his attention focused on Angelique. He inched along, step by aching step, across the rug. He took a stand by her gown dove-tailing out from the hearth. From the pocket of his coat, he brought out a packet of parchments sealed in a spot of blue wax.

"This is for you," he said.

"What is it?"

"I have spent all night with my lawyers. These papers require your signature. Are you literate, Angelique? Are you able to write your name?"

"Yes I am quite literate, sir." Angelique raised her eyes to glare up at him looming over her in a prideful stance like the Lord God himself.

Upstairs, Josette screamed. There followed a loud thump of her swooning to the floor.

Natalie's voice sobbed in French, "Oh my poor dear."

Angelique sighed returning her gaze to the dark hollow fireplace. _If she screams at the sight of his sleeping corpse, how will she react to him reaching up to bite her? That is the revenge I wanted to inflict on both of them—why do I feel no pleasure to imagine it now?_

Joshua Collins did not even blink. No emotion disturbed the placid mask of his face. He handed down the packet of papers into Angelique's hands. "First, your marriage is to be annulled. Your name will be stricken from the church's register. I will purchase a new family bible and copy the names of our ancestors, omitting yours. No one outside the family will ever know that you were married to my son. The future generations will never know that you existed. Am I clear? You are not his widow. You are nothing."

"I understand." She held the papers on her lap but did not break the wax seal. Turning away from his stern visage, she gazed into the charred log and ashes of the cold fireplace. Even the spirits of flame had abandoned her.

"Second, there is a note of draft from the bank in Boston where I keep some of my business accounts. When you present this letter, the banker will bestow upon you gold coins in the sum of one thousand dollars. You'll agree it is more than generous."

"Yes it is very generous."

Joshua continued, "I shall allow you until this time of morning tomorrow. Pack your belongings and be ready for the carriage. I trust that I won't have to count the silverware when you've gone?"

"You have my word, Mister Collins, I will take nothing from this house."

"Your word?" He snorted in contempt.

Angelique rose slowly to her feet. She faced him as a mirror of carefully restrained rage and disgust. _Oh the things I could do to you, Joshua Collins! If you only knew better than to provoke me. I have lost him. I ha__ve nothing else of value to lose._

"If I were Josette, would you take her word?"

"Of course."

"Then you will take my word, sir." Angelique turned her back on him. She strolled with a lady's grace across the room. She set the papers on the writing desk. "I will sign them before I leave Collinsport."

His back stiffened to ramrod straight. "If you will excuse me, I have arrangements to make for my son's burial."

"Yes, his burial." Angelique's eyes roved to the brightly lit window panes. She called out with her thoughts, _Ben... Ben Stokes, come to me. I need you_.

#

For several hours, Angelique dozed alone in her cold marriage bed. No dreams played in her restless mind. Her bones ached with exhaustion so she could not truly sleep. Until she performed the dreaded task, she would not be able to sleep. If only his meddling family would have stayed away! She had no opportunity to be alone with Barnabas ever since the moment he breathed his last. If not Josette and Natalie duPres hovering to cry over the bedside, then his father personally took upon himself the chore of dressing his son for the last time. Rigor mortis did not set into the corpse even after several hours. Joshua Collins remarked upon it, mistakenly assuming that the icy temperatures delayed the process. Sadly he was well-informed on morbid knowledge from his service in the war. Only Angelique knew the real cause for Barnabas's body to be preserved—all day long—as fresh and supple as the moment of death.

She rose from bed and went to the window. Gazing out at the white glare of snow, she called again from her thoughts, _Ben... Ben Stokes, where are you? Why don't you come to me?_

Angelique combed and styled her hair into a bouquet of blonde ringlets. Earrings of small gold hoops slipped into the needle holes that pierced her earlobes. She chose a new dress that she had never worn before: a dark green satin with vertical black stripes. Mourning clothes would be inappropriate, but not for the reasons that Joshua Collins had given. She did not dress as a widow because Barnabas was not truly dead.

#

Knocks at the front door resounded through the entire house. A brief pause, then the brass ring whacked against the hardwood twice more.

Angelique herself went downstairs to greet the visitor. On the way to the door, she kept thinking, _Where is Ben? What could be keeping him away from me?_

"Good afternoon, Madame." A reaper of death in the guise of a man stood quietly on the doorstep. Everything he wore was black: his round flat hat, his full-length cape, his overcoat and waistcoat, his breeches, his riding boots, and his leather gloves. He appeared to be barely thirty years old but styled his hair in the fashion of an older man, oiled flat and combed back severely from his high forehead. He had a long narrow face and eyes of such a faint shade of blue they could be almost gray.

"If you've come to see Mister Collins, I'm sorry to say he is not at home."

"Actually," he said. "I am searching for Joshua Collins. I was told he is visiting here today?"

"Oh yes." She glanced back over her shoulder to the empty staircase and the candlelit shadows of the second floor.

"May I come in?" He gazed in her general direction but seemed more interested in scrutinizing the door frame and the threshold.

"I'm sorry, but is it very urgent? Mister Collins is occupied with some business matters. I'm sure he would not want to be disturbed from his papers. May I tell him that you called, Mister...?"

"Trask," he said, lisping slightly. "Reverend Trask."

The name jolted her. Angelique recalled Abigail Collins speaking of a minister from Salem to whom she had written several letters. So this was what a witch hunter looked like: a slender unimposing man. Ben Stokes could easily throw him across the room with one hand. He carried a book under his right arm, the leather of its cover blending invisibly into his clothes. Only the cross tooled into its cover indicated it was a holy bible.

"I will tell him that you were here."

Trask boldly strolled inside as a wraith of flowing blackness. His full-length cape billowed into a cone behind him. "I'd prefer you tell him now."

"If you please, sir!"

Angelique trailed behind him, passing over the very spot where she had lain in a puddle of her own blood. A throw rug covered the stain. Trask's dragging heels shifted the rug. A bit of the rust-colored smear showed on the pine boards.

"You are the wife of Barnabas Collins, I presume?"

"I am."

At the fireplace, he bent over and curiously looked up the chimney. After a moment he straightened up with a sad frown, as if disappointed not to find a horned demon lurking in the charred bricks.

"Tell me about yourself."

"I would rather not," she said.

He rotated in a swirl of cloak. He held the bible close to his heart so that the little cross on the cover faced to her. "I have just come from the manor house on the hill, where I have interviewed the servants and several members of the Collins family. They tell me you are from the heathen island of Martinique in the Caribbean whence did come Tituba the legendary slave witch."

"I'm sorry." She blinked rapidly. "I don't know anyone named Tituba."

"Are you aware that you stand on the brink of Hell, madame? The precipice is open below your feet. The fires are stoked and ready."

Angelique sighed weariness at the old priestly rhetoric and how silly his ignorance. "Yes, we are all sinners. May God deliver us from evil."

"The matriarch of the house is in a stupor of despair. An innocent child dreams of devils with blood dripping from their mouths."

"Sarah dreamed?" she repeated, laying a hand to her own throat.

Reverend Trask kept talking, too enthralled with the sound of his own voice to listen to anyone else. "There has been a plague of wrath in this house. Pure hearts have turned from their true course. Adultery and licentiousness have cause tempers to flare, culminating in murder. The question is, who is at fault? Who had the most to gain?" His voice gained volume and passion to make her heartbeat quicken. "Clearly it was the Devil's plan to wreak havoc upon the righteous. The Devil and his minions are ever at our backs, like hungry wolves, mouths open, ready to devour our souls. They sniff at your heels, madame!"

"Excuse me, sir, but you are starting to frighten me."

"You should be frightened!" he boomed. "Dark forces are at work in this household. Death and blood are the currency of wickedness. The arrows of the reaper fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight can't discern them; the swiftest man cannot dodge them. As pastor Jonathan Edwards once wrote, '...men's own wisdom is no security to them from death; that if it were otherwise we should see some difference between the wise and politick men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death; but how is it in fact?' As we read in Ecclesiastes, 'How dieth the wise man? as the fool.'"

Hearing the creak of floor boards upstairs, Angelique looked to the ceiling. She wondered if the reverend's shouting had awakened Josette or Natalie from their exhausted sleep, or if it was enough to pry Joshua Collins away from mourning over the corpse of his son.

"Though they dig into Hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to Heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence I will command the Serpent, and he shall bite them."

Angelique flinched at the word _bite_. "If you please, sir."

"God has laid himself under no obligation by any promises to keep any natural man out of Hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death..."

"Enough!" Joshua Collins blasted from the top of the stairs.

Reverend Trask snapped out of his monologue trance. "Sir?"

Joshua Collins descended the stairs at an uneven gait. Favoring his right knee, he leaned on his walking cane every other step. He said nothing—not a single word—all the way down, forcing the reverend out of courtesy to wait for him to reach the bottom floor.

"Good afternoon, sir, my name is Rev—"

"I know who you are." Joshua's small eyes narrowed even more to make an appraisal of the black-garbed clergyman. Such a frown! If he were a trader on the Ivory Coast, and the reverend were a slave put up at auction, Joshua Collins would not have paid a ha'penny to own him.

"Then you know why your sister has invited me."

Joshua used his silver-tipped cane to point at the front door. "Consider yourself uninvited. I'll thank you to take your leave. Good day, Mister Trask."

Trask stepped forward with all the grim poise of a dueling swordsman. "Are you not aware, sir, that an agent of Satan has a nefarious scheme to destroy your family? Have you not seen the omens in the madness and the murder that has befallen your household these past few weeks? I speak of a witch! Yes, there is a bride of the Devil in your midst. A she-wolf in lamb's clothing. A succubus in the disguise of an innocent. She has deceived you and even now is plotting your destruction. Allow me to help you discover the hag's true identity."

"I shall ask you once more," Joshua said, raising his voice to try and out-shout the reverend. "Hospitality you may find with my sister's company, but you shall not receive it from me. I believe you are an ignorant fanatic, a blind man shooting his pistol in the dark. I will not tolerate your presence one more minute!"

Angelique sighed a sort of weary relief. Of all the people in the world to defend her, it was this gentleman. Some of Barnabas's spirit lived on in his father's cold rationality. If an item could not be inventoried and measured, it did not exist. Therefore, witches did not exist.

Reverend Trask inclined his head, almost bowing, almost—but not quite—respectful of the lord of the land. "If I may plead for your indulgence, sir. Before I go, I would very much like to speak with your son."

"I told you," Angelique said. "He is not at home."

"Then I ask permission to wait until he returns."

Joshua said, "Quite impossible."

"Why is that, sir?"

"He's gone." Joshua looked away to the window. A long quiet pause smoothed the worry lines on his forehead. Whatever grieving he had to do, he had finished in private. Now he was prepared to face the world again with a stoic mask of indifference. "He went to England."

"England?" the reverend asked.

Angelique fluttered her eyes and sprouted a quick smile. "Yes, that's right, he went away early this morning on an urgent matter to tend to business ventures in England."

"I see." Reverend Trask headed for the door. "Then I shall return to the main house and converse with your sister Abigail on these matters. But take heed, Mister Collins, that there is nothing between you and the flaming pit of Hell but the air. You have nothing solid to take hold of, nothing to save you from plummeting into the abyss, but the unobliged hand of a wrathful God."

In a swirl of black cloak and cold wind, Trask whooshed out of the door. All was silent when he had gone. Even the spirits in the shadows closed their eyes.

"What a disagreeable man." Joshua stared at the door.

"Imagine such nonsense." Angelique forced a soft laugh. "Witches! Here, in this day and age."

"Humbuggery and horsefeathers," he agreed.

"It was quite clever of you to say that he went to England. I don't know how else we would have gotten rid of him!"

Joshua Collins entered the parlor. He strolled slowly from the rug-covered spot stained in Angelique's blood and came to the place where Barnabas had stood when he had fired his pistol. There his father now posed between the armchair and the fireplace. He tilted his head back to gaze up at the portrait of Josette above the mantle. The serenity of the illustration was almost melancholy. Angelique wondered, was it possible for a portrait's mood to change after it had been painted?

"I did not say that merely to get rid of him," Joshua said with his back to her. "I've given the situation considerable thought. This is what we will tell everyone. Barnabas went to England."

"But..."

"I will pay Doctor Thornton a handsome sum of gold to keep his visit confidential. I've already spoken to Josette and Natalie upstairs. They understand."

"I don't, sir. I don't understand at all."

He turned around to face her at last. "No one must ever know that my son was afflicted with the plague. There will be chaos and panic. Workers will desert the cannery and the shipyards in droves. It will be the ruin of my business."

"Your business," she whispered incredulously.

"There will be no funeral. God forgive me, but he will have no headstone."

"What will you do with him?" she asked. "Toss him into the ocean?"

"No." For a moment, his stoic composure cracked. He looked aside and needed a few deep breaths to regain control of himself. "I have a place in mind. He will be interred with all the dignity that he deserves, but in a secret location where no one will ever find him."

"Where?"

He merely shook his head. "I must go. There are arrangements to be made."

Angelique held onto the banister at the foot of the stairs. She watched his father depart into the afternoon sunshine. The clock on the mantle chimed four times. Alone in the silence, the cold hard rock of fear solidified in her gut. It would be sunset before long. They were almost out of time.

#

Ben Stokes returned at quarter to five o'clock. He came to Angelique in the kitchen, where he found her busy with a kindling hatchet and sharpening the handle of a plunger taken from the butter churn. "I heard you callin' but I couldn't get here any faster. First that Reverend Trask was asking me all these questions about Mister Barnabas and Miss Josette, and then Abigail Collins ordered me to keep that Phyllis Wick busy with talkin' while she searched in her room. Miss Abigail thinks Phyllis might be the wi-... the wi-... I wish I could say it! But she couldn't find anything incriminating in her drawers. Just Phyllis's personal journal, and Abigail's reading it now."

"I'm not interested in why you're late." Angelique lifted the whittled stake to observe if she had sharpened the tip enough. "What matters is, you're here now."

"What're you doin' with that stick?"

Angelique held the precious stake gently against her chest. "Never mind. There is something I need you to do for me. Very soon, Riggs and Thompson will come here. They will take _him_..." She was careful not to say his name; since he had died, she had never spoken his name. "...away to be buried but not in the family cemetery in the churchyard. Joshua said that he will conceal the fact of his death out of concern that his employees will panic at the idea of a plague."

Ben Stokes's mighty hands curled into fists. "I wish I could tell 'em the truth. It was no plague that killed him."

"You know you can never say a word." Her eyes scrutinized the hatred that twisted his bear-like face into a furious carnival mask. "If I didn't know better, I would think that you found a way to tell _him_ the truth about me."

"You gagged me but good. I can't even say the word of what you are."

Angelique puzzled over the problem for a moment with a feeling that she had forgotten something important. Her suspicion lingered that, somehow, Ben Stokes had found a clever way to elude her spell of silence. But her mind was a fog of fear. Her gut dreaded the next chime of the clock.

"You must hurry, Ben. Follow the men, but at a distance so they don't see you. Discover where they take his body. Then, hurry back here and let me know."

"Why?"

She shrieked, "Don't ask questions! There isn't time. Just go."

#


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26, Finale

Sunset was minutes away. Winter days were all too short, and the five-mile hike to Eagle Hill cemetery was all too laborious in the deep piles of snow. _Are we too __late? Has he arisen already? Am I going to my doom?_

Ben Stokes escorted her to a granite mausoleum no larger than a fisherman's hut. He opened the latch of a wrought-iron gate. Hinges squeaked in the cold.

"They brought him in here," Ben told her.

Angelique entered an empty stone room. Vacant. No tombs; no coffins yet. The walls to either side held narrow windows decorated in mosaic stained glass as fine as any cathedral. Opposite the wrought-iron doorway, the far wall had three shallow archways going nowhere. Framed panels of granite blocks each had a die-cast lion's head affixed at the peak. Each lion's head was biting an iron ring. This was the place that Barnabas had once seen in a nightmare. Even before the servant crossed the empty chamber and reached to the iron ring, Angelique knew of the secret panel behind the wall. But in his nightmare, Barnabas had seen a coffin wrapped in chains. _Why would Joshua wrap his son's coffin in chains if he does not know that he is a vampire? Can a premonition be only__ partly true? Or am I doomed to fail?_

"Hurry," she said in a quavering voice. "Show me where he is."

Ben Stokes explained, "Mister Joshua said that during the revolution he used to hide munitions and supplies from the British in here."

He reached up easily to the height of the archway's peak. He pulled the iron ring in the lion's mouth. A chain extended a few inches. A latch dislodged. Stone on stone grinded as the panel opened inward. Darkness beckoned.

"Wait here," she said.

"I hate you. Even in death, you can't let him be at peace."

Angelique gripped the wooden stake in one hand and the mallet in the other. "You're wrong, Ben. That's why I'm here: to give him peace."

She ducked the low frame of the archway. Three blocky steps descended into a smaller chamber, just wide enough to contain a brass candelabra and a single wooden coffin. One whisper, one plea to the spirits of fire, and the wicks of nine candles flared up their brilliance. Shadows softened from black to brown.

Ben Stokes growled from the outer chamber, "You always wanted to be with him. Now, go to Hell with him." He tugged on the iron ring once more. The hidden latch retracted. The stone door slowly rotated and closed tightly shut.

If she were not so terrified of the sunset, she would have laughed at the simple man's pathetic attempt at vengeance. _As if a stone wall is able to contain me?_

The coffin was on a pedestal block elevating its lid to above her waist. Not only was she spared the labor of chiseling him out of a crypt, but she did not need to sink to her knees. In the end, she would finish with him in the same way as they had first met—standing face to face. _Bon jour, mademoiselle_, he had said when kissing her hand for the first time. Good day... He would never see another good day's light again.

Angelique raised the lid of his coffin. Hinges creaked a long, slow grind. She stretched her arms high overhead. Not being a very tall woman, she had to press her belly over the corpse to push the lid all the way open.

Barnabas lay quietly dead on a pallet of teal satin. His own father had laid him to rest with great care, expecting that he would never move again. He was dressed in all his gentleman finery: a black tailcoat with velvet collar, a vest of magenta satin, a cravat of indigo silk, and a jeweled medal pinned to his lapel. Eyes closed, his face had no expression. At peace. He was free, for the moment, of all the torment and fury. Her heart ached to see him like this. If only he had loved her, it would not have come to this!

Fear gave her strength to raise the long wooden stake over his chest. She aimed the point very carefully at where she knew his heart to be. She adjusted the angle to be sure of penetrating between the ribs on the very first blow. She knew she would not get another chance if she missed.

As soon as she raised the mallet, his eyes opened.

Terrible eyes, rimmed in bloody scarlet, glared up at her. His mouth snarled and she saw his fangs. She desperately brought the mallet down, trying for a strike, but he was too quick. He caught hold of her upraised arm.

"What are you doing?" he growled.

"Forgive me!"

His other hand clutched her throat. His thumb and fingers turned to an iron vice that squeezed her windpipe. Open-mouthed, she rasped and strained to draw air. Her sights blurred. Firefly sparkles clouded the inside of her eyelids. Distantly she heard the stake and mallet drop clattering to the ground.

He arose to sit upright in his coffin.

"Where are we?" he demanded, his voice hoarse and dry.

His grip on her throat eased, more out of curiosity than mercy. She was able to push away from him. Air clawed its way into her lungs.

Angelique staggered to collapse on the stone steps leading to the secret panel. She caressed her own throat and performed a brief spell of healing on herself. Only then was she able to speak again. "We are in the Collins mausoleum at the Eagle Hill cemetery. It's a hidden room, I'm told, where your father used to store munitions during the revolution."

"The mausoleum?" He swung his legs over the edge of the coffin. With the lithe grace of a panther, he alighted to the ground. "Why am I in a coffin?"

"I never meant for this to happen. I tried to cure you, remember? I made that brew."

Barnabas paced restlessly around his coffin. He looked to the ceiling and the bare stone walls, a caged predator seeking out prey. He was dark and terrible, and yet, even still, she adored him.

He said, "I remember being in bed... with a fever... bitten by an enormous bat... afraid I would die. I could feel the life draining out of me... the darkness consuming me from within... the light fading away..."

"I did everything I could to prevent it."

"Prevent?" His pale hand stroked around the frame of the coffin. His long fingers traced the inner lining of ruffled satin, touching the indentation in the pillow. "I was in a coffin because... I died?"

"Yes," she answered in a trembling voice. "You are dead."

With both hands, he slammed down the coffin's lid. "Then, how is it I am standing here talking to you? Is this more of your witchcraft?"

"Yes."

He advanced on where she lay on the steps. All a shadow in flickering candlelight, he crouched over her in a predatory stance. "You cursed me."

"Yes." Angelique burst to her feet and sidled away from him. He dogged after her. She maneuvered to have the coffin on its pedestal as a barrier in between them—as if that would stop him. "You shot me! I was so angry."

"You're not angry now." His lips spread out into a thin grimace. She could see the pointed tips of his fangs. "You're afraid of me."

"No," she whimpered. They continued the slow macabre gavotte of her backing away and him step by step pursuing her in a circle around the coffin.

"Don't lie! I can hear your heart pounding. Your blood is quickening with fright. You're afraid of me, or more precisely, you're afraid of what I have become. What have you done to me, Angelique? Am I so terrible that you can't even bear to look at me?"

"The curse," she began to say, and paused to try and think of how to tell him the truth. Her words had to be chosen carefully if she were to stand a chance of surviving the next few minutes. Somewhere inside that maddened predator thirsting for human blood, there might still be flicker of the tender man he had once been. "It has made you one of the living dead."

He groaned in such a low voice that she could not be sure if it was anguish, or confusion, or simply the growing hunger.

"But you can only walk about at night. By day, you must return to your coffin to sleep as the dead man you are, or the sunlight will destroy you."

"What else?" he demanded. "There's more, isn't there?"

Every part of him ached in the need for drinking blood. She could almost hear his veins and arteries crackling under his skin. He had to know instinctively what he craved. Yet something of the rational man still remained; the Jeffersonian scholar was thinking philosophically about his current state of being. _Cogito ergo sum_. His brows furrowed in the effort of trying to find reason in an unreasonable situation.

"You'll find out soon enough."

"More cryptic answers... more lies... I will not suffer your torment anymore!" He gripped her throat again. This time he relished the slow squeeze. Their bellies pressed together. His legs straddled her skirt. He pushed her backwards on his coffin's lid and bent forward over her, almost cracking her spine in half.

"What's wrong, witch? Can't use your magic to stop me from killing you?"

He allowed her enough air to gargle, "I could if I wanted to."

Fingers and thumb on either side of her windpipe squeezed and released, squeezed and released, toying with the idea of clamping down and crushing the life out of her. It was a game teasing her with the hope of perhaps allowing her to live. He enjoyed her terror. His gleeful grin twisted, his fangs growing longer into two sharp points.

"I don't believe you," he growled. "You're lying to me, you bitch, as you've always lied to me."

"No, no, I told you before. I do not wish to make a puppet of you. I love you, Barnabas!"

"Love me?" he snarled. "I remember your curse—every word of it. I shall carry those words of yours for all eternity. I will never be able to enjoy anyone's love. According to your own edict, all who love me must die. Therefore, _ma cherie_, you must die!"

He leaned into her, one final time. His forearm crushed her chest. She gripped the velvet lapels of his coat but was too weak to push him off. Alongside her, his left arm seized the ridges of molding on the coffin's lid so he could pull his whole weight into her, harder and harder, his body like a rack of stones pressing her flat. His iron fingers squeezed out her breath and the clamp prevented her from drawing in more. She surrendered to his powerful dark embrace. Purple and green sparkles turned to silver, then gray, and then she had a sensation of rushing forward into a bright light.

Angelique stepped back from herself, suddenly free of the choking pain. She watched her own body tumble out of Barnabas's lethal grasp. The limp corpse fell onto the floor of the mausoleum. Its emerald and black striped dress spread out in a half circle. The blonde hair was still perfectly coiffed. The aqua eyes wide open and staring at nothing. Lifeless. _He has killed me. Perhaps now he will believe that I truly do love him._

She floated like a white shadow unseen behind him. He turned a knob hidden under the second step. The secret panel made a grinding noise of a stone-on-stone as it opened. Barnabas emerged into the main room of the mausoleum where Ben Stokes nearly fainted with shock. Dear loyal Ben Stokes. Their voices blurred as master greeted servant. She heard the men's voices indistinctly as if she were underwater and they were people on shore. Soon she lost interest in them.

Her spirit passed on easily through the elegant wrought-iron gate and outside to the foggy cemetery. She viewed the other ghosts—ones who had been there all the time but her mortal eyes had been unable or unwilling to see. They were the blind, the forgotten and the despairing who lingered in the graveyard. One hovered beside each headstone like lost children waiting in the rain for their parents to come take them home.

There stood Jeremiah whom she caused to die. He turned to gaze at her, his head still wrapped in bandages from when the musket ball cracked his skull in half. No forgiveness showed in his stony gaze, but neither was there blame. She offered no remorse. They exchange a stare of acknowledgment.

_So he has killed you too_, Jeremiah's voice echoes on the cold wind.

_And I have killed him_, she replied.

_Not completely_. Jeremiah's tone was neutral. Whether he meant it as a compliment or a condemnation, she could not be sure. Either way, his opinion no longer mattered. His bandaged spirit turned away from her, resuming a quiet contemplation of his own name chiseled into the head stone.

Angelique swirled about to face the mausoleum. Among the other dead, Barnabas was an imperfect ghost who had not left his flesh. She saw the gnawing hunger inside him. She heard the pulse of his urgent need to consume human blood. How steadfast, to restrain himself from chewing into loyal Ben Stokes, not to drain him like a bag of fine wine. _A little bit of his humanity yet remains,_ _but how long until that too fades? You are cursed for eternity, and I am now eternal. Our marriage vows said, 'til death__ do us part, and now we are both dead. But we will never part. When you prowl the night, I will be your shadow. When you sleep by day, I will stand guard. You will never be free of me, nor I of you, Barnabas Collins._

The End


End file.
